A second pylon, or pyramidical tower, now leads to the interior and most considerable part of the temple, a portico inclosed with walls, which only receives light through the entablature or openings in the roof. Adjoining to this is the cella of the temple, without columns, inclosed by several walls, often divided into various small chambers, with monolith receptacles for idols or mummies or animals. The columns stand within the walls. The Egyptians had no perpetual temples. The colonnade is not, as among the Greeks, an expansion of the temple; it is merely the wall with apertures. The walls, composed of square blocks, are perpendicular only on the inside, and beveled externally, so that the thickness at the bottom sometimes amounts to twenty-four feet, and thus the whole building assumes a pyramidical form, the fundamental principle of Egyptian architecture. The columns are more slender than the early Doric, are placed close together, and have bases of circular plinths; the shaft diminishes, and is ornamented with perpendicular or oblique furrows, but not fluted like Grecian columns. The capitals are of the bell form, ornamented with all kinds of foliage, and have a narrow but high abacus, or bulge out below, and are contracted above, with low, but projecting abacus. They abound with sculptured decorations, borrowed from the vegetation of the country. The highest of the columns of the temple of Luxor is five and a quarter times the greatest diameter. [Footnote: Muller.] [Sidenote: The Pyramids.] But no monuments have ever excited so much curiosity and wonder as the Pyramids, not in consequence of any particular beauty or ingenuity, as from their immense size and unknown age. None but sacerdotal monarchs would ever have erected them--none but a fanatical people would ever have toiled upon them. They do not indicate civilization, but despotism. We do not know for what purpose they were raised, except as sepulchres for kings. They do not even indicate as high a culture as the temples of Thebes, although they were built at a considerable period subsequently, even several generations after Sesostris reigned in splendor. The pyramid of Cheops, at Memphis, covers a square whose side is seven hundred and sixty-eight feet, and rises into the air four hundred and fifty-two, and is a solid mass of stone, which has suffered less from time than the mountains near it. And it is probable that it stands over an immense substructure, in which may yet be found the lore of ancient Egypt, and which may even prove to be the famous labyrinth of which Herodotus speaks, built by the twelve kings of Egypt. According to this author, one hundred thousand men worked on this monument for forty years. What a waste of labor! The palaces of the kings are mere imitations of the temples, and the only difference of architecture is this, that the rooms are larger and in greater numbers. Some think that the labyrinth was a collective palace of many rulers.