A pilgrimage to the temples and tombs of Egypt, Nubia, and ...

304 KARNAK.
place, has only served to increase my wonder
and amazement— ay, and I will now say admira-
tion, of this master-piece of Pharaonic architec-
ture. Two days are absolutely necessary to afford
one a just idea of Karnak; the first day bewilder-
ment seizes upon all one's faculties—the second,
one is enabled to analyze and admire : but weeks
and months might be passed there, and new
beauties, and new wonders, be discovered each
succeeding day.
I thought that Ibsamboul had filled the mea-
sure of my astonishment at the prodigies of
Egyptian art, but what is it compared to Karnak ?
— to that confusion of stupendous structures,
amidst which the sublime hypostyle rears its
lofty columns in gigantic symmetry ; a colossus
amidst colossi ! Here
the eye wanders from
marvel to marvel, from obelisk to propylon, from
long avenues of shattered sphinxes, to prostrate
statues and ruined sanctuaries, and yet always
returns to that matchless hall with increasing
admiration. Nothing that remains of the archi-
tecture of ancient Greece or Rome, can vie with
the tranquil majesty of the scene that presents
itself, as approaching the ruins of Karnak by the
great western entrance that faces the river, the
eye pierces through a long vista of propyla, colon-