Note 41 — Chapter VIII · THEBES AND KARNAK.

The size of these stones not being given in any of our books, I paced the length of one of the shadows, and (allowing for so much more at each end as would be needed to reach to the centers of the two capitals on which it rested) found the block above must measure at least twenty five feet in length. The measurements of the great hall are, in plain figures, one hundred and seventy feet in length by three hundred and twenty-nine in breadth. It contains one hundred and thirty-four columns, of which the central twelve stand sixty-two feet high in the shaft (or about seventy with the plinth and abacus), and measure thirty-four feet six inches in circumference. The smaller columns stand forty-two feet five inches in the shaft, and measure twenty-eight feet in circumference. All are buried to a depth of between six and seven feet in the alluvial deposits of between three and four thousand annual inundations.