“The entrance into this temple, which is entirely hewn out of a stone resembling porphyry, is by a spacious front supported by two massy pillars and two pilasters forming three openings, under a thick and steep rock overhung by brushwood and wild shrubs. The long ranges of columns that appear closing in perspective on every side; the flat roof of solid rock that seems to be prevented from falling only by the massy pillars, whose capitals are pressed down and flattened as if by the superincumbent weight; the darkness that obscures the interior of the temple, which is dimly lighted only by the entrances; and the gloomy appearance of the gigantic stone figures ranged along the wall, and hewn, like the whole temple, out of the living rock,--joined to the strange uncertainty that hangs over the history of this place,--carry the mind back to distant periods, and impress it with that kind of uncertain and religious awe with which the grander works of ages of darkness are generally contemplated. “The whole excavation consists of three principal parts: the great temple itself, which is in the centre, and two smaller chapels, one on each side of the great temple. These two chapels do not come forward into a straight line with the front of the chief temple, are not perceived on approaching the temple, and are considerably in recess, being approached by two narrow passes in the hill, one on each side of the grand entrance, but at some distance from it. After advancing to some distance up these confined passes, we find each of them conduct to another front of the grand excavation, exactly like the principal front which is first seen; all the three fronts being hollowed out of the solid rock, and each consisting of two huge pillars with two pilasters. The two side fronts are precisely opposite to each other on the east and west, the grand entrance facing the north. The two wings of the temple are at the upper end of these passages, and are close by the grand excavation, but have no covered passage to connect them with it.[1]”