[Illustration: 41. Pillar, from the Porticocat Denderah.]
[Illustration: 42. Plan of Temple at Kalábsheh. Scale 100 ft. 1 in.]
On the east side of the island is the very beautiful structure known as “Pharaoh’s bed” (n). It is an oblong rectangular building of late date, surrounded by an intercolumnar screen with 18 columns. It was roofed with stone slabs supported on wooden beams, the sockets to receive which still exist. There is a doorway on the west wall, and another on the east wall opening on to a stone terrace or quay. Similar structures are believed to have existed at Thebes, close to the river, and connected by causeways with the temples; they may therefore have served as halls from which the processions started after disembarking from the boats on the river.
Strange as it may at first sight appear, we know less of the manners and customs of the Egyptian people during the Greek and Roman domination, than we do of them during the earlier dynasties. All the buildings erected after the time of Alexander which have come down to our time are essentially temples. Nothing that can be called a palace or pavilion has survived, and no tombs, except some of Roman date at Alexandria, are known to exist. We have consequently no pictures of gardens, with their villas and fish-ponds; no farms, with their cattle; no farmyards, with their geese and ducks; no ploughing or sowing; no representations of the mechanical arts; no dancing or amusements; no arms or campaigns. Nothing, in short, but worship in its most material and least intellectual form.
[Illustration: 43. Section of Temple at Kalábsheh. 50 ft. to 1 in.]
It is a curious inversion of the usually received dogmata on this subject, but as we read the history of Egypt as written on her monuments, we find her first wholly occupied with the arts of peace, agricultural and industrious, avoiding war and priestcraft, and eminently practical in all her undertakings. In the middle period we find her half political, half religious; sunk from her early happy position to a state of affairs such as existed in Europe in the Middle Ages. In her third and last stage we find her fallen under the absolute influence of the most degrading superstition. We know from her masters that she had no political freedom and no external influence at this time; but we hardly expected to find her sinking deeper and deeper into superstition, at a time when the world was advancing forward with such rapid strides in the march of civilisation, as was the case between the ages of Alexander and that of Constantine. It probably was in consequence of this retrograde course that her civilisation perished so absolutely and entirely under the influence of the rising star of Christianity; and that, long before the Arab conquest, not a trace of it was left in any form. What had stood the vicissitudes of 3000 years, and was complete and stable under Hadrian, had vanished when Constantine ascended the throne.