We shall find it hard to give any adequate description of Karnac. Its magnitude and beauty bewilder and delight us. Its marvelous array of gates, towers, columns, obelisks, and statues astonish and enchant us.
How shall we describe a temple of such magnificent proportions! If we include its various halls and apartments, it measures twelve hundred feet in length and about five hundred feet in width. Its massive walls seem like palisades, its immense pillars like forests. Avenues lead to it from each point of the compass. Double rows of colossal sphinxes cut from gray, red, and black granite are ranged for miles along many of these avenues.
Each monarch in his reign enlarged the proportions of the temple from those which it had reached under his predecessors, whom he was anxious to excel, till the temple is said to have finally occupied seventy-five acres.
In the grand hall we find over a hundred columns still standing. They measure from nine to twelve feet in diameter; many of them are over sixty feet in height.
These columns are covered with hieroglyphical sculptures and paintings, in which the coloring is still brilliant, notwithstanding the centuries that have elapsed since they first saw the light of day. Many of these sculptures and paintings depict scenes recorded in sacred history.
Chronicles of the storied past, these realistic groups depict many a stray chapter in the life history of the old Egyptian kings and their captive hosts. Lost in meditation, we stand before these silent verifiers of the records of sacred history, and with grateful hearts acknowledge the blessings of home and country and the advantages to be derived from an enlightened century, rich in science, philanthropy, and Christianity.