The great hall of Ammon was composed of pillars 78 feet high and 33 feet round, all carved and painted in vivid colours. Lesser halls and temples were added, and here, amid a blaze of colour and sunshine, the festivals were held, the high priests performed their sacred rites, the Pharaoh drove up in his gorgeous chariots with the harness of his horses ablaze with gold, while his subjects shielded their faces from the monarch who shared the glory of Ammon. At intervals the high priests brought out the sacred boat of the god, raised it aloft on their shoulders, and carried it around the temple, while the populace stood silent with awe. For a brief instant the curtains were drawn aside, and the god was disclosed to the multitude before returning to the silence and sanctity of the temple, from which the common people were rigidly excluded. About the king gathered all the wit and wisdom of the Egyptian empire. Magnificent banquets were held, at which were served to the guests fine dishes of venison, roast ducks and other fowl, and fish. Wine flowed, maidens danced. There was talk and laughter and love. To-day Thebes has vanished. The one-time capital of Egypt is a desert ruin. Near by are the villages of Karnak and Luxor, with a few natives living in their humble dwellings, and just a big hotel for the use of travellers, who come here to gaze on the ruins of the past. It is strange that thousands of years ago, when these islands were inhabited by a few savages who painted their bodies, threw a skin about them for warmth, and lived in the rudest of huts for shelter, far away to the south on the Nile a mighty civilization was flourishing, that would compare very favourably with the civilization of to-day. [Illustration: A PARTLY-HEWN OBELISK STILL ATTACHED TO THE ROCK IN ONE OF THE ANCIENT QUARRIES] While the barbarians of Britain were building their rude huts, the Egyptians were carving colossal pillars for the Hall of the Temple of Ammon, pillars over 30 feet round, and painting them with colours which are still fresh after all this lapse of time. Even then they had been building with brick for thousands of years. The tomb paintings show the brickmakers puddling the alluvial soil with their feet, shaping the mud into bricks, and baking them hard in the fierce heat of the sun. Moreover these bricks endured for centuries, and still endure; whereas many of the red bricks made in England thirty or forty years ago are perishing fast. Speculation is still going on as to how the Egyptians used to handle the enormous stones found in the ruins, and how they managed to place in position monuments like Cleopatra’s Needle. There is mention of certain engines having been used to lift the stones of the Pyramids, but what these engines were, nobody to-day can say with certainty.