in the adjacent valley of Beban-el-Maluk, the famous tombs
of the kings.

The population of the city of a hundred gates now consists of a few
Arab families, who form four villages of mud huts, clustered round those
gigantic columns and those mighty obelisks, a single one of which is
sought for by the greatest sovereigns of Europe for their palaces and
museums. Often, indeed, have I seen a whole Arab village rising from the
roof of a single Egyptian temple. Dendera is an instance. The population
of Gornou, numbering between three and four hundred, resides solely in
the tombs.

I think that Luxor, from its situation, usually first attracts the
notice of the traveller. It is close on the river, and is built on a
lofty platform. Its enormous columns are the first specimens of that
colossal genius of the Pharaohs, which the Ptolemies never attempted
to rival. The entrance to this temple is through a magnificent
propylon;-that is, a portal flanked by massy pyramidal moles. It is two
hundred feet in breadth, and rises nearly sixty feet above the soil.
This gate is entirely covered with sculpture, commemorating the triumph
of a conquering monarch.

On each side of the portal are two colossal statues of red granite,
buried in the sand up to their shoulders, but measuring thence, to the
top of their crowns, upwards of twenty feet. On each side of them, a
little in advance, at the time of my visit, were the two most perfect
obelisks remaining. One of them is now at Paris;--that famous obelisk of
Luxor, of which we have heard so much. From the propylon, you pass
into a peristyle court,--about two hundred and thirty feet long, by one
hundred and seventy--the roof of which was once supported by double rows
of columns, many of which now remain: and so on through other pyramidal
gates, and courts, and porticoes, and chambers, which are, in all
probability, of a more ancient date than those first described.

From Luxor you proceed to Karnak, the other great division on this side
of the river, through an avenue of sphinxes, considerably above a mile
in extent, though much broken. All the marvels of the world sink
before the first entrance into Karnak. It is the Alps-the Andes--of
architecture. The obelisks of Luxor may be unrivalled; the sculptures
of Medoenet Habu more exquisite; the colossus of the Memnonion more
gigantic; the paintings of the royal tombs more curious and instructive:
but criticism ceases before the multifarious w