isappeared, having been used as a quarry for thousands
of years; but the size of the site, which can still be traced,
shows that in actual area the temple covered a space of ground
within which Karnak, Luqsor, and the Ramesseum, huge as they all
are, could quite well have stood together.

Even in the time of Herodotus enough was still remaining of this
vast building to excite his profound wonder and admiration, and it
seemed to him a more remarkable structure than even the Pyramids. 'It
has,' he says, 'twelve courts enclosed with walls, with doors opposite
each other, six facing the north, and six the south, contiguous to
one another, and the same exterior wall encloses them. It contains
two kinds of rooms, some under ground, and some above ground over
them, to the number of 3,000, 1,500 of each.' He was not allowed
to inspect the underground chambers. 'But the upper ones, which
surpass all human works, I myself saw; for the passages through
the corridors, and the windings through the courts, from their
great variety, presented a thousand occasions of wonder as I passed
from a court to the rooms, and from the rooms to halls, and to
other corridors from the halls, and to other courts from the rooms.
The roofs of all these are of stone, as also are the walls; but
the walls are full of sculptured figures. Each court is surrounded
with a colonnade of white stone, closely fitted.'[*] Herodotus
believed that the building belonged to the time of Psamtek I.,
in which, of course, he was ludicrously far astray, but otherwise
there seems no reason to question that his description actually
represents what he saw, though no doubt his lively mind somewhat
multiplied the number of the rooms.

[Footnote *: Herodotus II. 148.]

Pliny the elder, judging from his description, evidently saw much
the same thing at Hawara as Herodotus had seen, though time must
have somewhat diminished the splendour of the building. Now, to
this temple there was already applied in the time of Herodotus the
name Labyrinth. It used to be believed that the Hawara Labyrinth
gave its name to the Cretan one, and an Egyptian etymology was
arranged for the word 'labyrinth,' according to which it would
have meant 'the temple at the mouth of the canal.' The Egyptian
form of the title, however, is 'a mere figment of the philological
imagination.' Probably originality lies in the other direction.
The first palace at Knossos dates from a period certainly as early
as