chamber are lavishly decorated
with scenes of every-day life, and it has even been suggested that
these places were not erected originally as tombs, but as
dwelling-places, which after death were appropriated as sepulchres.

[Illustration: FIG. 14.--PLAN AND SECTION OF THE TOMB AT BENI-HASSAN.

SECTION.]

The columns are surmounted by a small square slab, technically called
an abacus, and heavy square beams or architraves span the spaces
between the columns, while the roof between the architraves has a
slightly segmental form. The tombs of the later period, viz. of the
eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties, are very different from those of
the twelfth dynasty, and present few features of architectural
interest, though they are remarkable for their vast extent and the
variety of form of their various chambers and galleries. They consist
of a series of chambers excavated in the rock, and it appears certain
that the tomb was commenced on the accession of each monarch, and was
driven farther and farther into the rock during the continuance of his
reign till his death, when all work abruptly ceased. All the chambers
are profusely decorated with paintings, but of a kind very different
from those of the earlier dynasties. Instead of depicting scenes of
ordinary life, all the paintings refer to the supposed life after
death, and are thus of very great value as a means of determining the
religious opinions of the Egyptians at this time. One of the most
remarkable of these tombs is that of Manephthah or Sethi I., at
Bab-el-Molouk, and known as Belzoni's tomb, as it was discovered by
him; from it was taken the alabaster sarcophagus now in the Soane
Museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields. To this relic a new interest is given
by the announcement, while these pages are passing through the press,
of the discovery of the mummy of this very Manephthah, with
thirty-eight other royal mummies, in the neighbourhood of Thebes.

[Illustration: FIG. 15.--ROCK-CUT FACADE OF TOMB AT BENI-HASSAN.]

Of the Ptolemaic period no tombs, except perhaps a few at Alexandria,
are known to exist.

TEMPLES.

It is very doubtful whether any remains of temples of the time of the
fourth dynasty--_i.e._ contemporaneous with the pyramids--exist. One,
constructed on a most extraordinary plan, was supposed to have been
discovered about a quarter of a century ago, and it was described by
Professor Donaldson at the Royal Institute of British Architects i