DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14564#0066
5°
CITIES OF EGYPT.
unusual in the country. We rarely see there so wide a
plain encircled by mountains, though there are for ampler
expanses with a rocky wall in the dim distance, and we
never see pointed heights closing in the view. No
monument stands on the river's bank save the temple
of El-Uksur (Luxor), conspicuous with its long ranges
of columns. In the distance we discern other great
temples, the fortress-like gateway of El-Karnak, the
ruined Rameseum, the massive pile of Medeenet-Haboo,
and below the cliff the western hills, honeycombed with
the entrances of tombs. The size of the monuments
grows on us when we are near enough to gain a scale by
which to measure them from some passing figure, but
they lack the assertion of magnitude which the Pyramids,
when first seen, owe more to their surroundings than to
their dimensions. If the setting of Thebes is less advan-
tageous than that of Memphis to the works of man, it
is far more picturesque and beautiful. It has at once
charms of form and of well-defined expanse, both excep-
tions to the rules of the Egyptian landscape; nor does it
lack the great river, here broadened by islands, and offer-
ing long reaches of rushing water, the richly-coloured
landscape, and the solemn desert-background of rock, all
CITIES OF EGYPT.
unusual in the country. We rarely see there so wide a
plain encircled by mountains, though there are for ampler
expanses with a rocky wall in the dim distance, and we
never see pointed heights closing in the view. No
monument stands on the river's bank save the temple
of El-Uksur (Luxor), conspicuous with its long ranges
of columns. In the distance we discern other great
temples, the fortress-like gateway of El-Karnak, the
ruined Rameseum, the massive pile of Medeenet-Haboo,
and below the cliff the western hills, honeycombed with
the entrances of tombs. The size of the monuments
grows on us when we are near enough to gain a scale by
which to measure them from some passing figure, but
they lack the assertion of magnitude which the Pyramids,
when first seen, owe more to their surroundings than to
their dimensions. If the setting of Thebes is less advan-
tageous than that of Memphis to the works of man, it
is far more picturesque and beautiful. It has at once
charms of form and of well-defined expanse, both excep-
tions to the rules of the Egyptian landscape; nor does it
lack the great river, here broadened by islands, and offer-
ing long reaches of rushing water, the richly-coloured
landscape, and the solemn desert-background of rock, all