Although thus standing away back in the earliest twilight of the historic
morning, nevertheless they mark, not the beginning, but the perfection of
Egyptian art. They speak of long periods of growth in art and science
lying beyond the era they represent. It is this vast and mysterious
background that astonishes us even more than these giant forms cast up
against it.

[Illustration: THE GREAT HALL OF COLUMNS AT KARNAK.]

Being sepulchral monuments, the pyramids are confined to the western side
of the Nile valley (see p. 31). There are over thirty still standing, with
traces of about forty more.

The Pyramid of Cheops, the largest of the Gizeh group, near Cairo, rises
from a base covering thirteen acres, to a height of four hundred and fifty
feet. According to Herodotus, Cheops employed one hundred thousand men for
twenty years in its erection.

PALACES AND TEMPLES.---The earlier Memphian kings built great unadorned
pyramids, but the later Theban monarchs constructed splendid palaces and
temples. Two of the most prominent masses of buildings on the site of
Thebes are called, the one the Temple of Karnak, and the other the Temple
of Luxor, from the names of two native villages built near or within the
ruined enclosures. The former was more than five hundred years in
building. As an adjunct of the temple at Karnak was a Hall of Columns,
which consisted of a phalanx of one hundred and sixty-four gigantic
pillars. Some of these columns measure over seventy feet in height, with
capitals sixty-five feet in circumference.

[Illustration: STATUES OF MEMNON AT THEBES.]