"There has been and still is much dispute among Egyptian scholars on this subject: it is now generally agreed that it was the work of no one king, but rather of several. There is a difference of two hundred and fifty years between the earliest and latest sculptures, and it is believed that from the beginning to the completion of the temple was nearly three centuries. On the walls, columns, and obelisks are the names of kings of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties, and they are so conspicuous that it is pretty certain the building of the temple covered these two periods in Egyptian history. Thothmes III. and Rameses II. and III. are prominently represented, and some of the inscriptions show that portions were added to the temple much later than any of the rulers mentioned. "It is supposed that the present temple is on the site of an older one, and that four thousand years at least must be given for its antiquity. The Arabs have a tradition that Noah visited the temple after the Flood, and we may fairly believe that portions of it were finished before Jacob went to Egypt with his family. It was an old structure when Moses led the Israelites out of captivity, and its decay had begun when Christ was born at Bethlehem. Shishak, or Sheshonk, who plundered Jerusalem and led the King of Judea captive, is represented on its walls, and there is a picture showing his return with his train of unhappy prisoners. Do you wonder that we stand astonished amid the ruins of Karnak, which are older than the Bible, and older than any of the histories that have come down to our hands? "We spent the afternoon among the ruins, and then returned to Luxor. The evening was bright with the growing moon, and so we determined to see Karnak by moonlight. If any reader of these lines should hereafter be at Luxor when the moon favors, we advise him by all means to go there under its light, as he will find an effect that is not visible when the sun is in the sky. It is impossible to describe, and so we will not attempt a description; the play of light and the darkness of the shadows are surpassingly beautiful, and some of the columns and broken walls seem even more gigantic than at other times. There is an Arab village close to the ruins, but not within the temple itself; the only inhabitants are owls and jackals, who resent your intrusion with their peculiar cries, and seem to consider themselves the rightful heirs of the kings so long dead and gone." [Illustration: EGYPTIAN SOLDIERS.] CHAPTER XVI. THE RAMESEUM, MEDINET ABOO, AND THE VOCAL MEMNON. [Illustration: DRY FOOTING.]