Many buildings surrounded the temple, and the whole was enclosed by a wall. Various buildings were needed in order that all the functions of the temple could be performed. On one side was a court where the animals and birds intended for sacrifice were prepared. To the rear was a kitchen. The priests often received private revenues for providing food for the departed. This food as a rule was prepared in the kitchens of the temple. Dwellings for the priests, and the servants, store houses, granaries, the treasure house, gardens and an artificial lake lay within the temple wall. In the sacred lake the priests bathed, and in it they washed the vessels pertaining to the sanctuary. The priestly duties were manifold. Certain priests poured out drink offerings; others recited from holy books; others kept the annals of the temples. Their incomes were paid in kind--like all other obligations of the time. So many loaves of bread, so many jugs of wine, beer and cakes made up their annual revenue. While we may gain some feeble idea of these places of worship, built to do honor to the god--and to the king,--any description of them must necessarily be inadequate. "We may agree that neither the boldest imagination nor the most exact study, can enable us to form an adequate conception of the splendors of an Egyptian temple in its perfect state. The vast space it occupied; its lofty gateways; the long avenues of sphinxes; the glittering obelisks and the lifelike expressions of the monstrous statues, form a combination of the most imposing architectural grandeur. The æsthetic qualities of these structures cannot briefly be summed up. As we ponder them we shall be willing to acknowledge, for we shall discover, the exceptional constructive power of the ancient architects; we shall see how closely they followed Nature, and at times drew as well upon foreign art, though always preserving their own principles of form. There is always one grand imaginative vein running through all their work--which expresses the principal idea of their faith--_imperishability_. "The ancient Egyptians copied no one. Their art sprang from their surroundings. What they have left continues to baffle us in many ways. We may understand perspective better than they did; we are their superiors in the use of light and shadow. We dare to build higher, and we are willing to trust thousands of lives to walls which would be wrecked if a single Egyptian column should fall against them; but we do not yet understand how they lifted their great masses to such lofty places, nor do we know where their architects studied art."[3]