Edwards, Amelia B.: A thousand miles up the Nile (New York, [1888])

puiljb. ISO

lias been so often painted, so often photographed, that
every stone of it, and the platform on which it stands, and
the tufted palms that cluster round about it, have been
since childhood as familiar to our mind's eye as the sphinx
or the pyramids. It is larger, but not one jot less beauti-
ful than we had expected. And it is exactly like the pho-
tographs. Still, one is conscious of perceiving a shade of
difference too subtle for analysis; like the difference between
a familiar face and the reflection of it in a looking-glass.
Anyhow, one feels that the real Pharaoh's bed will hence-
forth displace the photographs in that obscure mental
rhgeoii-hole where till now one has been wont to store the
well-known image; and that even the photographs have
undergone some kind of change.

And now the corner is rounded; and the river widens
away southward between mountains and palm-groves; and
the prow touches the debris of a ruined quay. The bank
is steep here. We climb, and a wonderful scene opens
before our eyes. AVo are standing at the lower end of a
court-yard leading upto the propylons of the great temple.
The court-yard is irregular in shape and inclosed on either
side by covered colonnades. The colonuades are of un-
equal lengths and set at different angles. One is simply a
covered walk; the other opens upon a row of small cham-
bers, like a monastic cloister opening upon a row of cells.
The roofing-stones of these colonnades are in part dis-
placed, while here and there a pillar or a capital is missing;
but the twin towers of the propylon, standing out in sharp,
unbroken lines against the sky and covered with colossal
sculptures, are as perfect, or very nearly as perfect, as in
the days of the Ptolemies who built them.

The broad area between the colonnades is honeycombed
with crude brick foundations—vestiges of a Ooj^tic village
of early Christian time. Among these wo thread our way
to the foot of the principal propylon, the entire width
of which is one hundred and twenty feet. The towers
measure sixty feet from base to parapet. These dimensions
are insignificant for Egypt; yet the propylon, which would
look small at Luxor or Karnak, does not look small at
Phils. The key-note here is not magnitude, but beauty.
The island is small—that is to say, it covers an area about
equal to the summit of the Acropolis at Athens; and the
scale of the buildings has been determined by the size of