or even perceiving a small portion only of the bewildering confusion of
figures and emblems that were crowded on to the surface. Greek feeling
for beauty had here worked hand in hand with Oriental taste for gorgeous
magnificence, and every detail could bear examination; for there was not
a motive of the architecture, not a work of sculpture, painting, or
mosaic, not a product of the foundry or the loom, which did not bear the
stamp of thorough workmanship and elaborate finish. The ruddy, flecked
porphyry, the red, white, green, or yellow marbles which had been used
for the decorations were all the finest and purest ever wrought upon by
Greek craftsmen. Each of the hundreds of sculptured works which here had
found a home was the masterpiece of some great artist; as the curious
visitor lingered in loving contemplation of the mosaics on the polished
floor, or examined the ornamental mouldings that framed the reliefs,
dividing the walls into panels, he was filled with wonder and delight at
the beauty, the elegance and the inventiveness that had given charm,
dignity, and significance to every detail.

Adjoining these great halls devoted especially to the worship of the god,
were hundreds of courts, passages, colonnades and rooms, and others not
less numerous lay underground. There were long rows of rooms containing
above a hundred thousand rolls of books, the famous library of the
Serapeum, with separate apartments for readers and copyists; there were
store-rooms, refectories and assembly-rooms for the high-priests of the
temple, for teachers and disciples; while acrid odors came up from the
laboratories, and the fragrance of cooking from the kitchen and bake-
houses. In the very thickness of the walls of the basement were cells
for penitents and recluses, long since abandoned, and rooms for the
menials and slaves, of whom hundreds were employed in the precincts;
under ground spread the mystical array of halls, grottoes, galleries and
catacombs dedicated to the practice of the Mysteries and the initiation