8 THE TEMPLE OF MUT. [pari' r.

road reaches the pylon another avenue of sphinxes,
some buried, some showing above the dust heads
of rams or men, parts from it and runs with an
irregular curve to the east, and presently passes
before the front of the Temple of Mut.

The road which one left to the right before
entering the palm grove, is a broad track. It
passes the end of a small ruined temple, roofless
and with walls broken down, skirts the outer curve
of the Sacred Lake at Mut, and, rising slightly,
disappears between sandheaps, forming a gap
through which one sees the distant rosy hills of the
Gebel el Geir.

Thus the Sphinx Avenue under the palm trees
on the west, with its branch which leads to the
northern gate of the Temple of Mut, and the broad
track to the south, form three sides of a rough
parallelogram enclosing the temple with its precinct ;
the fourth side of the parallelogram is formed by
high mounds of tumbled sandheaps.

The area so enclosed is an arid sandy tract—the
sand not so loose that it is blown by winds, but dry
and infertile, bound into a hardish soil bv the dead
roots of thin straggling grass.

At the south-west corner of this area is the
ruined temple before mentioned, in front of which
two colossal standing statues are pitched forward
on their shoulders. At the north-east corner is
another ruined temple, and in front of this also
a great statue of a king rests on the earth in such