Howard-Vyse, Richard William Howard: Operations carried on at the Pyramids of Gizeh in 1837: with an account of a voyage into upper Egypt, and Appendix (Band 1) (London, 1840)

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OPERATIONS CARRIED ON AT GIZEH.

required obliquity of the surface, and afterwards smoothed
down from the top. It may give some idea of the vast-
ness of these buildings to observe that great spaces, par-
ticularly in the inner face, have not yet been finished.
The doors, of proportionate size, appear to have been
suspended in the same manner as at Edfou, and in other
temples.5 Immense figures of granite guard each side of
this entrance, which opens into a spacious court sur-
rounded by buildings of proportionate grandeur, and on
the eastern side by the entrance to the Great Temple.

This gigantic portal was decorated with the finest
sculpture, and hieroglyphics, and likewise with two enor-
mous Colossi; and, although surrounded by ruin and
desolation, stands without a rival in the world. What
edifice, antient, or modern, can vie with this structure,
in grandeur find simplicity ? and what, in comparison, is
the boast of Michael Angelo, that he would raise in the
air a dome similar to that of the Pantheon ? The mul-
titude of columns, the massive architraves, suspended
above 100 feet high in the air, the vast scale of the
component parts, rendered beautifully attractive by the
exquisite finish and variety of the painted sculptures, are
of a magnitude and perfection not to be described; and
the whole effect is far superior to that of any building
of uncoloured stone, and of smaller proportions. The
cella once had an upper range of columns, like that of
the Temple of Neptune at Passtum; although few of them

5 This mode of construction seems to have been universally applied
in very antient times to all doors of whatever dimensions, but at some
few places — at Patara, for instance, in Asia Minor — the stone doors
of antient tombs slide in grooves.