Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Beato.
The roof of the nave was thus five feet higher than those of the aisles, and in the clear storey thus formed, stone gratings, similar to those in the temple of Amon, admitted light to the building. The courtyard, surrounded by a fine colonnade of two rows of columns, was square, and was entered by four side posterns in addition to the open gateway at the end placed between two quadrangular towers.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Insinger and
Daniel Héron.
This pylon measures 104 feet in length, and is 32 feet 6 inches wide, by 58 feet high. It contains no internal chambers, but merely a narrow staircase which leads to the top of the doorway, and thence to the summit of the towers. Four long angular grooves run up the façade of the towers to a height of about twenty feet from the ground, and are in the same line with a similar number of square holes which pierce the thickness of the building higher up. In these grooves were placed Venetian masts, made of poles spliced together and held in their place by means of hooks and wooden stays which projected from the four holes; these masts were to carry at their tops pennons of various colours. Such was the temple of Khonsû, and the majority of the great Theban buildings—at Luxor, Qurneh, and Bamesseum, or Medinet-Uabu—were constructed on similar lines. Even in their half-ruined condition there is something oppressive and uncanny in their appearance. The gods loved to shroud themselves in mystery, and, therefore, the plan of the building was so arranged as to render the transition almost imperceptible from the blinding sunlight outside to the darkness of their retreat within. In the courtyard, we are still surrounded by vast spaces to which air and light have free access. The hypostyle hall, however, is pervaded by an appropriate twilight, the sanctuary is veiled in still deeper darkness, while in the chambers beyond reigns an almost perpetual night. The effect produced by this gradation of obscurity was intensified by constructional artifices. The different parts of the building are not all on the same ground-level, the pavement rising as the sanctuary is approached, and the rise is concealed by a few steps placed at intervals. The difference of level in the temple of Khonsû is not more than five feet three inches, but it is combined with a still more considerable lowering of the height of the roof. From the pylon to the wall at the further end the height decreases as we go on; the peristyle is more lofty than the hypostyle hall, this again is higher than the sanctuary and the hall of columns, and the chamber beyond it drops still further in altitude.*
* This is “the law of progressive diminution of heights” of
Perrot-Chipiez.
Karnak is an exception to this rule; this temple had in the course of centuries undergone so many restorations and additions, that it formed a collection of buildings rather than a single edifice. It might have been regarded, as early as the close of the Theban empire, as a kind of museum, in which every century and every period of art, from the XIIth dynasty downwards, had left its distinctive mark.*