Position 59 - Middle Aisle Of The Great Hypostyle And The Obelisk Of Thutmosis I, From The Top Of The Fourth Pylon, Karnak, Thebes

Here we gain a more comprehensive view of the nave of the great hall than we had when we stood down there on the third pylon (Position 57); for now we can also see the right-hand row, which is much better preserved than that on the left, the capitals of which have been shattered, probably by fire, while the further four on the right are almost unblemished. The first two, one on each side, have been repaired at some period, with rough masonry, which has never been dressed down.

The columns must not be judged by these two. The four nearly perfect ones on the right convey very effectively the grandeur and sombre beauty which an Egyptian architect understood how to express in his great colonnade. Here you see more clearly than before, that they are papyrus flower columns, such as regularly occupy the central aisle of such a hypostyle. They are in grace and contour perhaps not equal to the magnificent columns at Luxor, which Amenophis III erected there, with the purpose of building a hall similar to this; but their mere size alone is a potent factor in the tremendous impression which they convey.

See those vast architraves each supported on the square block, or abacus, resting upon the capital of the column. These architraves upheld the now vanished roof, of which a few fragmentary pieces may be seen lying upon them. This roof was 75 feet above the pavement, but all has now been shattered and hurled to the floor below by the successive destructions of Assyrian, Persian and Roman; and what the hand of man could not destroy the earthquake has laid low, until the columns rise in nakedness to the sky, flooded with sunshine, whereas the architect intended them to be seen in the sombre half light that was dimly diffused through the great hall.

That light came through grated stone windows, of which you notice the row on the left, on a level with the capitals, but so foreshortened that you may not recognize them as the ones that you saw across the sacred lake. The corresponding row on the other side is hidden by the obelisk, though you may see this end of it projecting on the right of the obelisk. These windows, as you observed before, occupy the difference in level between the higher roof of the central aisle and the lower roof of the side aisle, and form a clerestory.

Our first point of view in this hall was just on the other side of this obelisk (Plan 12), on the ruins of the right-hand tower of the third pylon; but we are now standing on the left-hand tower of the fourth pylon. This handsome obelisk of Thutmosis I we have seen several times before, the first time having been from the rear of the temple (Position 53). Note how the falling of the heavy masonry from the pylon where we stand has split off a corner of the shaft as it smote the obelisk.

You have been struck by the large and beautiful hieroglyphs of the middle column. These are the dedication inscription of Thutmosis I, early in the 18th Dynasty. The side columns of smaller hieroglyphs are additional inscriptions of Ramses IV and Ramses VI, which they have inserted here, upon a monument which did not belong to them.

An obelisk should have but one line of inscription down the middle of each face like that of Sesostris I, which you saw at Heliopolis. But the decadent Ramessids of the 20th Dynasty were unable to erect obelisks for themselves, and were obliged to appropriate those of their ancestors. There is no more graphic evidence of the decline of Egypt under the 20th Dynasty than such monuments as these.

Just behind us as we stand here on the fourth pylon is a ruinous hall in which stands the tallest obelisk in Egypt. Our next position is to be a point behind us and to our left, from which we shall look northeast across this hall. The red lines numbered 60 in the middle portion of Plan 12 give this next position.