should be approached by a _dromos_ or paved way, eleven hundred feet
long, which should be flanked on either side by nine similar statues,
placed at regular intervals along the road, and all representing
himself. The egotism of the monarch may perhaps be excused on account of
the grandeur of his idea, which we nowhere else find repeated, avenues
of sphinxes being common in Egypt, and avenues of sitting human
_life-size_ figures not unknown to Greece, but the history of art
containing no other instance of an avenue of colossi.

Another of Amenhotep's palace-temples has been less unkindly treated by
fortune than the one just mentioned. The temple of Luxor, or El-Uksur,
on the eastern bank of the river, about a mile and a half to the south
of the great temple of Karnak, is a magnificent edifice to this day; and
though some portions of it, and some of its most remarkable features,
must be assigned to Rameses II., yet still it is, in the main, a
construction of Amenhotep's, and must be regarded as being, even if it
stood alone, sufficient proof of his eminence as a builder. The length
of the entire building is about eight hundred feet, the breadth varying
from about one hundred feet to two hundred. Its general arrangement
comprised, first, a great court, at a different angle from the rest,
being turned so as to face Karnak. In front of this stood two colossal
statues of the founder, together with two obelisks, one of which has
been removed to France, and now adorns the centre of the Place de la
Concorde at Paris. Behind this was a great pillared hall, of which only
the two central ranges of columns are now standing. Still further back
were smaller halls and numerous apartments, evidently meant for the
king's residence, rather than for a temple or place exclusively devoted
to worship. The building is remarkable for its marked affectation of
irregularity. "Not only is there a considerable angle in the direction
of the axis of the building, but the angles of the courtyards are hardly
ever right angles; the pillars are variously spaced, and pains seem to
have been gratuitously taken to make it as irregular as possible in
nearly every respect."[23]

Besides this grand edifice, Amenhotep built two temples at Karnak to
Ammon and Maut, embellished the old temple of Ammon there with a new
propylon, raised temples to Kneph, or Khnum, at Elephantine and built a
shrine to contain his own image at Soleb in Nubia, another shrine at
Napat