Fig. 8 is taken from a neighboring and still more gigantic temple, that of Karnak.  Imagine an immense hall, 170 feet deep by 329 feet broad.  Down the middle run two rows of six columns each (the nearest ones in the picture have been restored), nearly seventy feet high.  They have campaniform (bell-shaped) capitals.  On either side are seven rows of shorter columns, somewhat more than forty feet high.  These, as may be indistinctly seen at the right of our picture, have capitals of a different type, called, from their origin rather than from their actual appearance, lotiform or lotus-bud capitals.  There was a clerestory over the four central rows of columns, with windows in its walls.  The general plan, therefore, of this hypostyle hall has some resemblance to that of a Christian basilica, but the columns are much more numerous and closely set.  Walls and columns were covered with hieroglyphic texts and sculptured and painted scenes.  The total effect of this colossal piece of architecture, even in its ruin, is one of overwhelming majesty.  No other work of human hands strikes the beholder with such a sense of awe.

Fig. 9 is a restoration of one of the central columns of this hall.  Except for one fault, say Messrs. Perrot and Chipiez,[Footnote:  “Histoire de l’Art Egypte,” page 576.  The translation given above differs from that in the English edition of Perrot and Chipiez, “Art in Ancient Egypt,” Vol.  II., page 123.] “this column would be one of the most admirable creations of art; it would hardly be inferior to the most perfect columns of Greece.”  The one fault—­a grave one to a critical eye—­is the meaningless and inappropriate block inserted between the capital and the horizontal beam which it is the function of the column to support.  The type of column used in the side aisles of the hall at Karnak is illustrated by Fig. 10, taken from another temple.  It is much less admirable, the contraction of the capital toward the top producing an unpleasant effect.

Other specimens of these two types of column vary widely from those of Karnak, for Egyptian architects did not feel obliged, like Greek architects, to conform, with but slight liberty of deviation, to established canons of form and proportion.  Nor are these two by any means the only forms of support used in the temple architecture of the New Empire.  The “proto-Doric” column continued in favor under the New Empire, though apparently not later; we find it, for example, in some of the outlying buildings at Karnak.  Then there was the column whose capital was adorned with four heads in relief of the goddess Hathor, not to speak of other varieties.  Whatever the precise form of the support, it was always used to carry a horizontal beam.  Although the Egyptians were familiar from very early times with the principle of the arch, and although examples of its use occur often enough under the New Empire, we do not find columns or piers used, as in Gothic architecture, to carry a vaulting.  In fact, the genuine vault is absent from Egyptian temple architecture, although in the Temple of Abydos false or corbelled vaults (cf. page 49) do occur.