Note 40 — Chapter VIII · THEBES AND KARNAK.

The ruins of the great Temple of Luxor have undergone a complete transformation since the above description was written; Professor Maspero, during the two last years of his official rule as successor to the late Mariette Pasha, having done for this magnificent relic of Pharaonic times what his predecessor did for the more recent temple of Edfoo. The difficulties of carrying out this great undertaking were so great as to appear at the first sight almost insurmountable. The fellâheen refused at first to sell their houses; Mustapha Aga asked the exorbitant price of £3,000 for his consular residence, built as it was between the columns of Horemheb, facing the river; and for no pecuniary consideration whatever was it possible to purchase the right of pulling down the mosque in the first great court-yard of the temple. After twelve months of negotiation, the fellâheen were at last bought out on the fair terms, each proprietor receiving a stated price for his dwelling and a piece of land elsewhere upon which to build another. Some thirty families were thus got rid of, about eight or ten only refusing to leave at any price. The work of demolition was begun in 1885. In 1886, the few families yet lingering in the ruins followed the example of the rest; and in the course of that season the temple was cleared from end to end, only the little native mosque being left standing within the precincts, and Mustapha Aga’s house on the side next the landing-place. Professor Maspero’s resignation followed in 1887, since when the work has been carried on by his successor, M. Grébaut, with the result that in place of a crowded, sordid, unintelligible labyrinth of mud huts, yards, stables, alleys and dung-heaps, a noble temple, second only to that of Karnak for grandeur of design and beauty of proportion, now marshals its avenues of columns and uplifts its sculptured architraves along the crest of the ridge which here rises high above the eastern bank of the Nile. Some of those columns, now that they are cleared down to the level of the original pavement, measure fifty-seven feet in the shaft; and in the court-yard built by Rameses II, which measures one hundred and ninety feet by one hundred and seventy, a series of beautiful colossal statues of that Pharaoh in highly polished red granite have been discovered, some yet standing in situ, having been built into the walls of the mud structures and imbedded (for who shall say how many centuries?) in a sepulcher of ignoble clay. Last of all, Mustapha Aga, the kindly and popular old British consul, whose hospitality will long be remembered by English travelers, died about twelve months since, and the house in which he entertained so many English visitors, and upon which he set so high a value, is even now in course of demolition.