Position 50 - The Most Beautiful Colonnade In Egypt—south Across The Court Of Amenophis Iii, Luxor Temple, Thebes

There is not another such group of columns as these in all Egypt! Look at those fine contours as the shaft rises to the beautiful capital. Each column is a cluster of papyrus buds, which form the capital, while the stems below make up the shaft. The individual stems stand out clearly, as well as the buds in the capital, with the broad, smooth surface below it, on which were painted the bands, conceived as binding the cluster together.

Imagine such a colonnade, painted with all the bright hues of the tropic verdure which they represent, all aglow with throbbing color under a tropic sky, and framed in masses of nature's green, as the tall palms outside the court bow languidly over the roof of the porticoes, and you will gain some faint hint of the real beauty of which an Egyptian architect was master. On our left are the giant columns of the unfinished hall. These represent the papyrus flower, its open bell forming the capital, and its stem the shaft.

Such columns, as we shall later often observe, were regularly placed on either side of the central aisle of such a hall as Amenophis III here planned. The side aisles, here wanting, were then made up of bud columns, not so high as those of the nave, thus producing a clerestory, a basilica roof, the forerunner of the cathedral architecture of Europe. We shall better understand this form when we have seen the great hall at Karnak (Position 58).

The river is on our right, the axis of the temple on our left (see Plan 10 and Map 8); we look almost due south (with our backs to the lower river and Cairo) into the noble court, flanked by that forest of columns in its rear. Their bases are all dark except those of one row, which are touched by the afternoon sun.

These stand on the left side of the central aisle leading back through that hall and several ante-chambers into the holy of holies; and down that aisle the august image of the god was borne on those rare occasions when he came forth to celebrate some great feast. Behind that hall, and around the holy of holies are grouped a series of chambers for the priests and the utensils and stores necessary for the temple service.

They are not visible from here, but you can find them on the plan. The great altar of sacrifice stood in the court before us in plain view of all; but it has now perished, and in place of the gorgeous procession of the god, a native leads a buffalo to pasture across the sacred precincts of the ancient sanctuary, while another, sitting lazily astride a tiny donkey with its tinier foal behind it, converses with a friend.

We return now to the front of the temple, to a position before the pylon on which we took our first position here. This standpoint is given on the upper part of Plan 10.