It is the existence of these lists which gives such interest and such reality to the study of Architecture in Egypt. Fortunately there is hardly a building in that country which is not adorned with the name of the king in whose reign it was erected. In royal buildings they are found on every wall and every pillar. The older cartouches are simple and easily remembered; and when we find the buildings thus dated by the builders themselves, and their succession recorded by subsequent kings on the walls of their temples, we feel perfectly certain of our sequence, and nearly so of the actual dates of the buildings; they are, moreover, such a series as no other country in the world can match either for historic interest or Architectural magnificence.
But in Egypt Proper and in Nubia the Egyptians were in the habit of excavating monuments from the living rock, but with this curious distinction, that, with scarcely an exception, all the excavations in Egypt Proper are tombs, and no important example of a rock-cut temple has yet been discovered. In Nubia, on the other hand, all the excavations are temples, and no tombs of importance are to be found anywhere. This distinction may hereafter lead to important historical deductions, inasmuch as on the western side of India there are an infinite number of rock-cut temples, but no tombs of any sort. Every circumstance seems to point to the fact that, if there was any connection between Africa and India, it was with the provinces in the upper part of the Valley of the Nile, and not with Egypt Proper. This, however, is a subject that can hardly be entered on here, though it may be useful to bear in mind the analogy alluded to.
[Illustration: 30. Plan and Section of Rock-cut Temple at Abû Simbel. Scale for plan 100 ft. to 1 in.; section 50 ft. to 1 in.]
Like all rock-cut examples all over the world, these Nubian temples are copies of structural buildings only more or less modified to suit the exigencies of their situation, which did not admit of any very great development inside, as light and air could only be introduced from the one opening of the doorway.
The two principal examples of this class of monument are the two at Abû Simbel, the larger of which is the finest of its class known to exist anywhere. Its total depth from the face of the rock is 150 ft., divided into 2 large halls and 3 cells, with passages connecting them.