File:Up the Nile, and home again. A handbook for travellers and a travel-book for the library. (1862) (14763727492).jpg

Identifier: upnilehomeagainh00fair (find matches)
Title: Up the Nile, and home again. A handbook for travellers and a travel-book for the library.
Year: 1862 (1860s)
Authors: Fairholt, F. W. (Frederick William), 1814-1866
Subjects:
Publisher: London, Chapman and Hall
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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d civilisation of the people than those ofour own countrymen in the comparatively recentdays of the Saxon heptarchy, or, perhaps, evenduring the middle ages, from what they have leftto us. Our knowledge of the high state of art andluxury in this favoured region three thousand yearsago is thus obtained, not merely from the statementsof the most ancient writers, sacred and profane, butfrom an examination of the monuments left by thepeople themselves; and not the least extraor-dinary feature in these ancient works is the exquisitebeauty they frequently possess—a beauty that de-creases only as they approach comparatively moderntimes. Thus the sculptures of the era of Moses arefar finer, more truthful, delicate and beautiful thanthose of the reign of the Ptolemies; and these againare more so than those which were produced underRoman rule. The vast columns of the great hall are coveredwith hieroglyphics, and figures of the king sacrificingto the god Khem, the deity of generation, to whose
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ANCIENT THEBES. 323 worship the temple was devoted, and whose mundaneinfluence made him one of the most importantdeities of paganism. These columns are of muchelegance, and are still brilliant with fragments of thecolour which once richly decorated them. Thegigantic character of this noble hall will be bestcomprehended by Wilkinsons measurements. It is170 feet by 320 feet; each column is 62 feet high,exclusive of plinth and abacus, and 11 feet 6 inchesin diameter. At each side of the central avenuewere placed seven lines of smaller columns; butonly small by contrast, being 42 feet 5 inches inheight, and 28 inches in circumference. Plate XV.,sketched from one side of the centre of this hall,shows three pillars in advance of the grand centralseries, looking through the side court on the fallencolumn, which is so effective a termination to theview through its doorway. There are one hundred andtwenty-two of these lesser columns ; the massive roofwhich they once supported is gone, but the

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