What you are aware of is your
own immense and beautiful calm of utter satisfaction--a calm which has
quietly inundated you, like a waveless tide of the sea. How rare it is
to feel this absolute satisfaction, this praising serenity! The critical
spirit goes, like a bird from an opened window. The excited, laudatory,
voluble spirit goes. And this splendid calm is left. If you stay here,
you, as this temple has been, will be molded into a beautiful sobriety.
From the top of the pylon you have received this still and glorious
impression from the matchless design of the whole building, which you
see best from there. When you descend the shallow staircase, when you
stand in the great court, when you go into the shadowy halls, then it is
that the utter satisfaction within you deepens. Then it is that you feel
the need to worship in this place created for worship.
The ancient Egyptians made most of their temples in conformity with
a single type. The sanctuary was at the heart, the core, of each
temple--the sanctuary surrounded by the chambers in which were laid up
the precious objects connected with ceremonies and sacrifices. Leading
to this core of the temple, which was sometimes called "the divine
house," were various halls the roofs of which were supported by
columns--those hypostyle halls which one sees perpetually in Egypt.
Before the first of these halls was a courtyard surrounded by a
colonnade.
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