DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4393#0127
SIUT TO DENDERAH. 109
the Nurse of Horus, the Egyptian Aphrodite, to whom
yonder mountain of wrought stone and all these wastes
were sacred?
We were by this time near enough to see that the square
piers of the facade were neither square nor piers, but huge
round columns with human-headed capitals; and that the
walls, instead of being plain and tomb-like, were covered
with an infinite multitude of sculptured figures. The
pylon—rich with inscriptions and bas-reliefs, but disfigured
by myriads of tiny wasps'nests, like clustered mud-bubbles
—now towered high above our heads and led to a walled
avenue cut direct through the mounds and sloping down-
ward to the main entrance of the temple.
Not, however, till we stood immediately under those
ponderous columns, looking down upon the paved floor
below and up to the huge cornice that jirojected overhead
like the crest of an impending wave, did we realize the
immense proportions of the building. Lofty as it looked
from a distance, we now found that it was only the in-
terior that had been excavated, and that not more than
two-thirds of its actual height was visible above the
mounds. The level of the avenue was, indeed, at its
lowest part full twenty feet above that of the first great
hall; and we had still a steep temporary staircase to go
down before reaching the original pavement.
The effect of the portico as one stands at the top of this
staircase is one of overwhelming majesty. Its breadth, its
height, the massiveness of its parts, exceed in grandeur all
that one has been anticipating throughout the long two
miles of approach. The immense girth of the columns,
the huge screens which connect them, the ponderous
cornice jutting overhead, confuse the imagination, and in
the absence of given measurements* appear, perhaps, even
more enormous than they are. Looking up to the archi-
trave, we see a kind of Egyptian Panathenaic procession of
carveu priests and warriors, some with standards and some
with musical instruments. The winged globe, depicted
upon a gigantic scale in the curve of the cornice, seems to
* Sir G. Wilkinson states tlie total length of the temple to be
ninety three paces, or two hundred and twenty feet; and the width
of the-portico fifty paces. Murray gives no measurements; neither
does Mariette Bey in his delightful little " Itineraire;" neither does
Purgusson, nor Ckampollion, nor any other writer to whose works
1 have had access.
the Nurse of Horus, the Egyptian Aphrodite, to whom
yonder mountain of wrought stone and all these wastes
were sacred?
We were by this time near enough to see that the square
piers of the facade were neither square nor piers, but huge
round columns with human-headed capitals; and that the
walls, instead of being plain and tomb-like, were covered
with an infinite multitude of sculptured figures. The
pylon—rich with inscriptions and bas-reliefs, but disfigured
by myriads of tiny wasps'nests, like clustered mud-bubbles
—now towered high above our heads and led to a walled
avenue cut direct through the mounds and sloping down-
ward to the main entrance of the temple.
Not, however, till we stood immediately under those
ponderous columns, looking down upon the paved floor
below and up to the huge cornice that jirojected overhead
like the crest of an impending wave, did we realize the
immense proportions of the building. Lofty as it looked
from a distance, we now found that it was only the in-
terior that had been excavated, and that not more than
two-thirds of its actual height was visible above the
mounds. The level of the avenue was, indeed, at its
lowest part full twenty feet above that of the first great
hall; and we had still a steep temporary staircase to go
down before reaching the original pavement.
The effect of the portico as one stands at the top of this
staircase is one of overwhelming majesty. Its breadth, its
height, the massiveness of its parts, exceed in grandeur all
that one has been anticipating throughout the long two
miles of approach. The immense girth of the columns,
the huge screens which connect them, the ponderous
cornice jutting overhead, confuse the imagination, and in
the absence of given measurements* appear, perhaps, even
more enormous than they are. Looking up to the archi-
trave, we see a kind of Egyptian Panathenaic procession of
carveu priests and warriors, some with standards and some
with musical instruments. The winged globe, depicted
upon a gigantic scale in the curve of the cornice, seems to
* Sir G. Wilkinson states tlie total length of the temple to be
ninety three paces, or two hundred and twenty feet; and the width
of the-portico fifty paces. Murray gives no measurements; neither
does Mariette Bey in his delightful little " Itineraire;" neither does
Purgusson, nor Ckampollion, nor any other writer to whose works
1 have had access.