buildings that lay further north; and we shall therefore find it the best preserved of the ancient world. In spite of more than two thousand years of weather, vandalism and decay its condition is so perfect today that the temple of Edfu serves as the best surviving example from which to gain an impression of an ancient Egyptian sanctuary as completed by the architects. Indeed the building cannot be termed a ruin, as we have designated every temple which we have thus far visited.

With a good wind it is less than a half day's sail from the walls of El Kab to the modern village of Edfu. A short half hour's walk from the shipping and we issue from the houses on the west of the village, and discover the pylon seemingly submerged deeply below the level of the village. streets. As at Esneh, the modern town slowly rose around the temple, until the temple pavement was far below that of the streets. Indeed as we shall see the temple itself was invaded by the houses and almost engulfed save the pylon-towers. We descend from the level of the streets

as at Esneh by a long flight of steps leading down to the main door of the temple between the pylon towers, which rear their enormous bulk far above us as we go down. Standing at last beneath the vast doorway, where we feel like insignificant pygmies, we cast about us for some elevation which may enable us to gain a more comprehensive view of the building.

In such a situation the pylon towers themselves are the only recourse. Entering the court we find a door on either side of the temple axis, leading into the heart of the pylon, whence a stair of two hundred and forty-two steps in fourteen flights conducts us to the summit. No ancient building now surviving offers such a prospect. From our lofty point of view we look down the entire length of the temple. Out yonder in the rear is the portion begun by the third Ptolemy in 287 B. C. With its hypostyle hall followed by two transverse vestibules leading to the holy of holies, and the surrounding chambers in the rear, it was completed by his sucessor, Philopater, Ptolemy II, in 212 B. C. It was then a complete temple but for the still lacking court in front. In 122 B. C. Ptolemy IX (Euergetes II) built the vast colonnaded hall in front of the old temple hypostyle and under his successors the present exterior or girdle wall, with the colonnaded court, and the vast pylons in front, were finally completed in 57 B. C. The older temple thus forms a kernel within the extensions which were added to and around it. Beneath these comparatively late buildings must lie the wreck of the prehistoric temple of Horus, erected here by the local kinglets of this region, the "worshippers of Horus," as the historic Egyptians called him, distant and elusive figures, already in early Egypt confused and misty and lost in the legends of the forgotten, prehistoric world.

We look down upon the sumptuous court of Ptolemy IX, with its columned porticos on three sides, and flanked by the stately colonnades of the great hall in the rear, into which we look over a dwarf wall. Our eyes follow the roof backward to the holy of holies, and all is in almost perfect preservation, as when it left. the hand of the

architect, save that over the nave, and also over the holy of holies a roofing block or two have collapsed and fallen in. Otherwise it is ready today for the resumption of the temple ritual stopped by order of Theodosius in 378 A. D. Could we here restore the color of these gray stones, could we recall the vanished temple garden with its wealth of tropical verdure in which the temple was embowered; could we reanimate a generation of the priests who sleep in the neighboring cemetery and with them the multitude, crowded about the great altar which once stood in this fore-court; could we hear the voices of the priests mingling with the hum of the populace, and smell the fragrant clouds of incense that rose daily from the court; if we could raise up the dead gods that were so long enshrined here and recall to yonder holy of holies the figures of the sacred hawk revered here for more than five thousand years;—if we could do all this, then the work of the architect, dropping into its proper place in the life and thought of the people, would assume far higher functions than we are now able to associate with these silent courts and deserted halls, exposed to the prosaic gaze of every wandering tourist, and clothed with none of the sombre mystery and solemn beauty which such a sanctuary always conveyed to the Egyptian whose god it sheltered.

In spite of the loss of the temple garden the building as seen from here, is framed in a noble setting. Between us and the river extends the mass of village houses, built of sun-dried brick, and except for an occasional shutter, or the gleam of a glazed window, these modern dwellings of the natives will differ very little from those of ancient days which now form the accumulated rubbish encumbering the temple. Behind winds the river between scattered groups of palms bending over the waters, and wide stretches of rich green fields dotted with villages. On either hand loom grandly the pale and distant cliffs, within which the whole is framed, and suggesting always how the Egyptian's world was limited by the deserts within which the Nile has worked out his valley.

We descend now and pass through the spacious court, across the pavement that has so often resounded to the crowding feet of worshipping multitudes. Before us rises the splendid hypostyle hall, separated from the court only by a dwarf-wall, engaging with the front row of columns, and rising only half their height, thus exposing the fine contours and the rhythm of the colonnades within. We enter, moving down the axis or nave where all that surrounds us is just as it was when the edict of Theodosius closed the great doors over one thousand five hundred years ago, except that the colors on the walls are now faded and the great doors, mounted in massive bronze, have been removed. The two missing blocks in the ceiling of the hall also admit more light than was customary in the old days. While the edict of Theodosius (378 A. D.) may have closed the doors of all the temples in the Delta, and likewise this one for a time, it could not at once annihilate the gods of Egypt in favor of Christianity here in remoter Upper Egypt. At Philae, which we are soon to visit, the worship of the old gods continued for more than a hundred years after the edict of Theodosius had forbidden it, and it may well have gone on here for a century more. But by the fifth century, all the splendid temples that we have seen were deserted, converted into Christian churches, or filled with the wretched mud-brick hovels of the poor, which, as they were rebuilt over the ruins of their fallen predecessors, slowly rose and engulfed temple after temple, as we found this one here, and likewise Esneh, and part of Luxor.

As we move down the long axis of the temple from hall to hall, we presently stand at the door of the holy of holies, now brightly lighted, as a broad band of sunshine drops through the rectangular hole left by a block which has fallen from the ceiling. When in use it was a dark and mysterious place, where the king or the initiated high priest alone might enter to feed, clothe, anoint and burn incense to the image of the great god. That image has long since vanished, but the massive granite shrine in which it stood is still here, its polished surface shining in the flood

of sunshine that now falls upon it. It is hewn of a single block of black granite from the first cataract, and is still in perfect condition, except for the disappearance of the solid bronze doors, with which it was once closed. With these doors in place it must have been a splendid object. Ramses III has left us a description of a shrine which he made for the temple of Karnak. He says: "I made for thee a mysterious shrine in one block of fine granite; the double doors upon it were of copper in hammered work, engraved with thy divine name. Thy great image rested in it, like the sun-god in his horizon, established upon this throne unto eternity in thy great august sanctuary." The Pharaoh then describes the splendor of the ritual vessels used in the service of the god, which were wrought with the most prodigal magnificence in silver and gold, inlaid with costly stones.

Likewise the ornaments which it was the king's office to attach to the person of the god, were of the most elaborate and sumptuous design, and wrought with a refinement of skill unattained anywhere in the ancient world before the advent of the Greeks. These gray walls now suggest nothing of the riches which they once contained. The wealth of these ancient priesthoods has now all vanished, and the once richly filled chambers stand bare and empty. It is a melancholy thought to recall the many noble monuments of the goldsmith's art, which have been dragged by the plunderer from these chambers and hammered or melted into old gold. Parts of them may be contained in the English sovereigns which you yearly carry in your pocket on this journey. A staircase near by leads to the roof from which imposing views of the court and the rear of the pylon may be had. The reality of the past which it represents is nowhere so vividly felt as here where all is in a state of such surprising preservation. Here too we discern Egypt finally and hopelessly involved in the great Mediterranean world controlled by Greece and Rome. Begun under the successors of Alexander the Great, it was finished only as Rome was knocking at the doors of the north, in the days of Cleopatra; and then after but four