in the hypostyle which follows the pronaos. Then come,
one after another, two halls of increasing holiness, where the daylight
enters regretfully through narrow loopholes, barely lighting the
superposed rows of innumerable figures that gesticulate on the walls.
And then, after other majestic corridors, we reach the heart of this
heap of terrible stones, the holy of holies, enveloped in deep gloom.
The hieroglyphic inscriptions name this place the "Hall of Mystery" and
formerly the high priest _alone, and he only once in each year_, had the
right to enter it for the performance of some now unknown rites.

The "Hall of Mystery" is empty to-day, despoiled long since of the
emblems of gold and precious stones that once filled it. The meagre
little flames of the candles we have lit scarcely pierce the darkness
which thickens over our heads towards the granite ceilings; at the most
they only allow us to distinguish on the walls of the vast rectangular
cavern the serried ranks of figures who exchange among themselves their
disconcerting mute conversations.

Towards the end of the ancient and at the beginning of the Christian
era, Egypt, as we know, still exercised such a fascination over the
world, by its ancestral prestige, by the memory of its dominating past,
and the sovereign permanence of its ruins, that it imposed its gods
upon its conquerors, its handwriting, its architecture, nay, even its
religious rites and its mummies. The Ptolemies built temples here, which
reproduce those of Thebes and Abydos. Even the Romans, although they had
already discovered the _vault_, followed here the primitive models, and
continued those granite ceilings, made of monstrous slabs, placed flat,
like our beams. And so this temple of Hathor, built though it was in
the time of Cleopatra and Augustus, on a site venerable in the oldest
antiquity, recalls at first sight some conception of the Ramses.

If, however, you examine it more closely, there appears, particularly in
the thousands of figures in bas-relief, a considerable divergence. The
poses are the same indeed, and so too are the traditional gestures. But
the exquisite grace of line is gone, as well as the hieratic calm of the
expressions and the smiles. In the Egyptian art of the best periods the
slender figures are as pure as the flowers they hold in their hands;
their muscles may be indicated in a precise and skilful manner, but they
remain, for all that, immaterial. The god Amen hi