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There was no moon to break the shadows in the Great Hypostyle Hall of the Temple of Amnon; neither was there sound or sign of life, the winter residents and bird-of-passage tourists being duly occupied in the festivities which are the order of the night in hotel life on the Nile. It is not actually dangerous, nor is it actually wise, to visit the stupendous ruins of Egypt alone at night.
In a peculiar way the temple of Dendereh impresses with a sense of mystic dignity, for though the pylons and obelisks have gone, and its outside precincts are smothered in a mass of Roman débris, the hypostyle hall which we enter is perhaps more impressive than any other interior in Egypt.
They were posted close round the lower step of the platform that raised the hypostyle above the nave and the colonnades on each side of it. In the distance Gorgo could see a vast body of men slowly approaching in detachments, and with long pauses at intervals.
The entrails of the beast sacrificed by Damia had been black as though scorched, and a terrific groan had been heard from the god himself in the great shrine; the pillars of the great hypostyle had trembled and the three heads of Cerberus, lying at the feet of Serapis; had opened their jaws. Gorgo listened in silence to the old woman's story; and all she said in reply was: "Let them wail."
An unforeseen event has, however, considerably complicated and retarded the work. In October, 1899, one of the columns of the side aisles of the great Hypostyle Hall fell, bringing down with it several others. The whole place was a chaotic ruin, and for a moment it seemed as though the whole of the Great Hall, one of the wonders of the world, would collapse.
The full blaze of day penetrated nowhere but into the circular vestibule, which was lighted by openings in the drum of the cupola that rested on four gigantic columns. In the inner hall there was only dim twilight; while the hypostyle was quite dark, but for a singularly contrived shaft of light which produced a most mysterious effect.
A heavy curtain, that looked as though giants must have woven it on a loom of superhuman proportions, hung, like a thick cloud shrouding a mountain-peak, from the very top of the hypostyle, in grand folds over the niche containing the statue, and down to the floor; and while it hid the sacred image from the gaze of the worshipper it attracted his attention by the infinite variety of symbolical patterns and beautiful designs which were woven in it and embroidered on it.
The longest architraves known those, namely, which bridge the nave of the hypostyle hall of Karnak have a mean length of 30 feet. They each contain 40 cubic yards, and weigh about 65 tons. Ordinarily, however, the blocks are not much larger than those now used in Europe. They measure, that is to say, about 2-1/2 to 4 feet in height, from 3 to 8 feet in length, and from 2 to 6 feet in thickness.
When the players found that remonstrance had no effect they rushed into the hypostyle and tried to reduce the musicians to silence by force.
The small speos of Hathor, about a hundred paces to the northward, is of smaller dimensions. The façade is adorned with six standing colossi, four representing Rameses II., and two his wife, Nefertari. The hypostyle hall, however, is supported by six Hathor-headed pillars.
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