THE TEMPLE OP DENDERA. 109 astonishment, on arriving at the entrance, to find that I had approached the temple on a level with half its height, and that the pavement of the portico was as far below as the scrolls of its cornice were above me. The six columns I had seen covered three other rows, of six each, all adorned with the most elaborate sculpture and exhibiting traces of the brilliant coloring which they once possessed. The entire temple, which is in an excellent state of preservation, except where the hand of the Coptic Christian has defaced its sculptures, was cleaned out by order of Mohammed Ali, and as all its chambers, as well as the roof of enormous sand-stone blocks, are entire, it is considered one of the most complete relics of Egyptian art". I find my pen at fault, when I attempt to describe the impression produced by the splendid portico. The twenty-four columns, each of which is sixty feet in height, and eight feet in diameter, crowded upon a surface of one hundred feet by seventy, are oppressive in their grandeur. The dim light, admitted through the half closed front, which faces the north, spreads a mysterious giom around these mighty shafts, crowned with the fourfold visage of Athor, still rebuking the impious hands that have marred her solemn beauty. On the walls, between columns of hieroglyphics, and the cartouches of the Caesars and the Ptolemies, appear the principal Egyptian deities — the rigid Osiris, the stately Isis and the hawk-headed Orus. Around the bases of the columns spring the leaves of the sacred lotus, and the dark-blue ceiling is spangled with stars, between the wings of the divine emblem. The sculptures are all in raised relief, and there is no stone in the temple without them. I cannot explain to myself the unusual emotion f felt while contemplating this wonderful combination of a