e pylon you have received this still and glorious
impression from the matchless design of the whole building, which you
see best from there. When you descend the shallow staircase, when you
stand in the great court, when you go into the shadowy halls, then it is
that the utter satisfaction within you deepens. Then it is that you feel
the need to worship in this place created for worship.

The ancient Egyptians made most of their temples in conformity with
a single type. The sanctuary was at the heart, the core, of each
temple--the sanctuary surrounded by the chambers in which were laid up
the precious objects connected with ceremonies and sacrifices. Leading
to this core of the temple, which was sometimes called "the divine
house," were various halls the roofs of which were supported by
columns--those hypostyle halls which one sees perpetually in Egypt.
Before the first of these halls was a courtyard surrounded by a
colonnade. In the courtyard the priests of the temple assembled. The
people were allowed to enter the colonnade. A gateway with towers gave
entrance to the courtyard. If one visits many of the Egyptian temples,
one soon becomes aware of the subtlety, combined with a sort of high
simplicity and sense of mystery and poetry, of these builders of the
past. As a great writer leads one on, with a concealed but beautiful
art, from the first words to which all the other words are ministering
servants; as the great musician--Wagner in his "Meistersinger," for
instance--leads one from the first notes of his score to those final
notes which magnificently reveal to the listeners the real meaning
of those first notes, and of all the notes which follow them: so the
Egyptian builders lead the spirit gently, mysteriously forward from the
gateway between the towers to the distant house divine. When one enters
the outer court, one feels the far-off sanctuary. Almost unconsciously
one is aware that for that sanctuary all the rest of the temple was
created; that to that sanctuary everything tends. And in spirit one is
drawn softly onward to that very holy place. Slowly, perhaps, the body
moves from courtyard to hypostyle hall, and from one hall to another.
Hieroglyphs are examined, cartouches puzzled out, paintings of
processions, or bas-reliefs of pastimes and of sacrifices, looked at
with care and interest; but all the time one has the sense of waiting,
of a want unsatisfied. And only when one at last reaches the sanctuary
is