cottages built in the courts of the temples.  The ancient structures, however, remain in a state of wonderful preservation.  Almost the whole extent of eight miles along the river is covered with magnificent portals, obelisks decorated with most beautiful sculptures, forests of columns, and long avenues of sphynxes and colossal statues.  The most remarkable monuments, the ruins of which remain, are the temples of Carnac, Luxor, the Memnonium or temple of Memnon, and the temple of Medinet Abu.  The tomb of Osymandyas, the temple of Iris, the Labyrinth, and the Catacombs lie on the western side of the Nile.  In the interior of the mountains which rise behind these monuments, are found objects less imposing and magnificent indeed, but not less interesting—­the tombs of the kings of Thebes.  Several of these were opened by Belzoni, and were found in great preservation, with mummies in the sarcophagi, as well as dispersed through the chambers.

Such was ancient Thebes—­a city so populous that, according to ancient writers, in times of war 10,000 soldiers issued from each of her hundred gates, forming an army of 1,000,000 men.  That these magnificent ruins are the remains of “the city of an hundred gates,”—­“the earliest capital in the world,” cannot be doubted.  According to the measurements made by the French, their distance from the sea on the north, is 680,000 metres (850 miles), and from Elephantine on the south, 180,000 metres (225 miles)—­corresponding exactly with the 6,800 and 1,800 stadia of Herodotus.  The circumference of the ruins is about 15,000 metres (171/2 miles), agreeing with the 140 stadia given by Diodorus as the circumference of Thebes.  The origin of the name of this celebrated city, as well as the date of its foundation, is unknown.  According to Champollion, who deciphered many of the inscriptions on these ruins, the Egyptian name was Thbaki-antepi-Amoun (City of the Most High), of which the No-Ammon of the Hebrews and Diospolis of the Greeks are mere translations; Thebae, of the Greeks is also perhaps derived from the Egyptian Thbaki (the city).

THE TEMPLE OF CARNAC.

The largest of the temples of Thebes, and of any in Egypt, is that of Carnac, on the site of the ancient Diospolis.  Diodorus describes it as thirteen stadia, or about a mile and a half in circumference, which nearly agrees with the admeasurements of Denon.  It has twelve principal entrances; and the body of the temple, which is preceded by a large court, consists of a prodigious hall or portico, the roof of which is supported by one hundred and thirty-four columns, some twenty-six, and others thirty feet in circumference; four beautiful obelisks then mark the entrance to the shrine, which consists of three apartments, built entirely of granite.

TEMPLE OF LUXOR.