Benson, Margaret; Gourlay, Janet: The temple of Mut in Asher: an account of the excavation of the temple and of the religious representations and objects found therein, as illustrating the history of Egypt and the main religious ideas of the Egyptians (London, 1899)

2 THE TEMPLE OF MUT. [part I.

graven with vast hieroglyphic inscriptions ; and as
seen from the boat, these look scarcely more ir-
regular than the square-hewn doorways of the tombs
hollowed out in the face of the cliff. Here and
there the rocky walls open out to show, if one has
luck to note it, some ruined city of Roman times
with Titanic walls and great empty gateways : a
city built out of the rock it stands on, and so rough-
hewn and huge that one questions whether this
too is not a freak of nature. Sometimes the hills
retire again from the river, leaving a broad space
of cultivated land and a belt of desert; and the
clefts that run up these hills end in a top so flat
that one cannot but imagine the summits levelled by
a gigantic plane.

In the north there are no hills on the west side of
the river ; but a great raised bank of sand on which
pyramids stand—the only breaks in the long soft
curves of the horizon ; but below Thebes the
Libyan hills begin to form themselves, and as
one approaches Luxor there is a chain on the
right hand and on the left; these open out broadly
on each side and nearly close again some way above
the village. The flat-topped hills on the east break
at Thebes into the points and ridges of the Gebel
el Geir ; the square-shouldered Libyan chain of the
west descends with slopes and precipices sharply
outlined against more distant mountains. The
fainter tints of the north have given place to the
eold of the limestone hills, showing in ethereal

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