y the head of the goddess Hathor, to whom the
temple is dedicated, while columns and walls alike are covered with
decorative inscriptions.

Through the mysterious gloom we pass through lofty doorways, which
lead to the shrine or the many priests' chambers, which, entirely
dark, open from the corridors.

Though it has been partially buried for centuries, and the smoke of
gipsy fires has blackened much of its illuminated vault, enough of the
original colour by which columns and architraves were originally
enriched still remains to show us how gorgeous a building it once had
been. There are a great many temples in Egypt of greater importance
than Dendereh, but though Edfu, for example, is quite as perfect and
much larger, it has not quite the same fascination. Others are more
beautiful perhaps, and few Greek temples display more grace of
ornament than Kom Ombo or submerged Philae, while the simple beauty of
Luxor or the immensity of the ruins of Karnac impress one in a manner
quite different from the religious feeling inspired by gloomy
Dendereh.

I have previously spoken of the hum of bees in the fields, but here we
find their nests; for plastered over the cornice, and filling a large
portion of the deeply-cut inscriptions, are the curious mud homes of
the wild bees, who work on industriously, regardless of the attacks
of the hundreds of bee-eaters[8] which feed upon them. Bees are not
the only occupants of the temple, however, for swallows, pigeons, and
owls nest in their quiet interiors, and the dark passages and crypts
are alive with bats.

[Footnote 8: A small bird about the size of a sparrow.]

There are many other temples in Egypt of which I would like to tell
you had I room to do so, but you may presently read more about them in
books specially devoted to this subject. At present I want to say a
few words about _hieroglyphs_, which I have frequently mentioned.

Hieroglyphic writing is really _picture_ writing, and is the oldest
means man has employed to enable him to communicate with his fellows.
We find it in the writing of the Chinese and Japanese, among the
cave-dwellers of Mexico, and the Indian tribes of North America; but
the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt differed from the others in this
respect, that they had _two_ values, one the _sound_ value of letters
or syllables of which a word was composed, the other the _picture_
value which determined it; thus we find the word "cat" or "dog"
spelled by two or