A priest, in the full costume of his sacred office, stood at the door, and preceded by him we entered. As it was the hour of oblation, he held a censer in his hand, and approaching an altar before a granite tablet at the end of the temple, he invoked the mysterious god. The temple has no roof, but is exquisitely decorated and painted with sacred symbols. On each side stands a tablet of limestone. The tablet over the altar is inscribed with the name of the designer of the sphinx, Menes, the first mortal king after the general overflow of the mountains, and also with the destruction of the gigantic gods by the uprising of unknown oceans upon the globe. The tablet holds his shield, and on it is pictured the escape of the son of the ancient gods, in a ship, which is resting upon a mountain peak. In this tradition, mother, we find repeated our Phœnician history of the flood, before the days of the first kings. Without doubt all nations retain a similar tradition. Upon the same tablet is also a representation of a later king offering incense and libations to the god to whom the sphinx is consecrated. The tablets on the side also represent kings offering prayer to the god. The floor is beautifully tesselated with variegated stones; and on all sides are ivory or silver tables, covered with beautifully shaped vases, containing offerings of worshippers. There are, besides, ten shrines before the altar, upon each of which rests a golden crown, gifts of kings of other lands. Without question this temple of the sphinx is the richest in Egypt in gifts, as well as most honored by its Pharaohs. Is it not the vestibule to the grand pyramidal temple which is the tomb of the first mortal king? But, my dear mother, I must not linger at the feet of the sphinx. Leaving the temple, we ascended one of two broad stair-cases, and mounting to a succession of terraces, adorned with statues of gods, the vast bulk of the sphinx being on our right, we reached a noble stone platform behind the image, upon which stands an ancient figure, in coarse marble, worn by age, of Chephres the Great. He stamps a sea-dragon under his feet, and upon his capped head is the beak of a galley, with the head and wings of a dove. In this symbol, dear mother, behold again the representation of the deluge, and the dove that guided the ship which held Chephren, or Chephres, and his father, the god Noachis, or Noah.