The Nile boat or, glimpses of the land of Egypt / by . escription of this nature would be absolutely unin-telligible. Even with the admirable survey of Wilkinson, withwhich every one should be provided, lying before me as I write,the plan appears so confused, that memory cannot retain morethan a few of its more salient points. This spot appears to havebeen the most sacred in Thebes. To the original temple, earlyas Osirtesen II., which was of small dimensions, additions werecontinually made, till it assumed a vastness and splendour un-equalled by any other monument in the city. Othe
The Nile boat or, glimpses of the land of Egypt / by . escription of this nature would be absolutely unin-telligible. Even with the admirable survey of Wilkinson, withwhich every one should be provided, lying before me as I write,the plan appears so confused, that memory cannot retain morethan a few of its more salient points. This spot appears to havebeen the most sacred in Thebes. To the original temple, earlyas Osirtesen II., which was of small dimensions, additions werecontinually made, till it assumed a vastness and splendour un-equalled by any other monument in the city. Other templeswere erected in the vicinity of this most sacred site, and succes-sively united, by avenues of sphynxes and majestic propylaea andcourts, with the principal edifice, till the whole formed a mazeof religious structures through which the ancient Egyptianmust have wandered with awe, and which, in their originalperfection, with the gorgeous ceremonial of the worship per-formed in them, must have produced a soul-subduing effectupon this superstitious FIRST COURT OF KARNAK. 191 But to return to the great propylon. The first view pre-sented shows the great court to which it gives access; in thefore-ground is the wall forming its boundary; the correspondingone opposite is seen attached to the base of the propylon, and,running up to a small temple, let in, as it were, to the court,the external wall of which just beyond contains a sculpturedrepresentation of Sheshonk, the Shishak of the Book of Kings,leading his prisoners, among which it is supposed are the cap-tive Jews from Jerusalem, which was taken by this the open distant ground beyond this side of the court, ap-pear in perspective, on the right hand, the propylaea of anothersmall temple of the Ptolemaic period, with the noble gatewaybeyond, by which we approached; and farther to the left, asuccession of ruined propylaea, through which was another ap-proach to the great temple from a smaller one
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1840, booksubjectegyptdescriptionandt
