The Sun.
London, England, 1863-11-12 00:00:00

The Ruins of Luxor and Karnak,

It is pretty generally known that the obelisk on
the, Place de la Concorde has its fellow at Luxor,
where it lies, covered with valuable inscriptions,
part of which only have been published. These
two obelisks stood at the entrance of the palace,
the walls of which are covered with a number of
designs carved in the stone and interspersed with
hieroglyphics. Three of the granite statues which
flanked the entrance ere still visible ; one of them is
buried in sand up to the chin. The entrance itself,
partly in ruins, is half stopped up with brickwork,
only a narrow opening being left. A miserable Arab
village, built of mud, fills up the nooks and crevices
of these ruins, contrasting strangely with the majesty
of the ancient edifice. " The smallness of the huts
which mask the stone walls, gives them,'' says N..
Tremaux in his recent work on Egypt and Ethiopia,
" the appearance of birds' nests incrusted in the
cavities of a monumental edifice. The mere abacus
of a capital, the shaft of which is buried in the sands,
often shelters more than one hut." The same author

tells un that this palace was probably built by
Amenophis-Memnon in the 17th century before our
era, and enlarged on the northern side by Ithamses
the Great or Sesostris, who gave himself the title
or Master of the Earth. In the Bth century before
Jesus Christ, the Ethiopian conqueror Ss.baco re-
paired the gate of the edifice, and caused his own
image and actions to be substituted for those of
Sesostris in various places. Proceeding onward
from Luxor to its sister village Karnak, many of
the remains of old Thebes are still perceived
peering from under the sand_ An avenue, 200 steps
in length, and decorated with granite sphynxea,
many of which have lost their heads, leads to a
fine gate which opens into a vast court; fronting
this, there is a temple still partly in tolerable
preservation. One of its pylones or gateways is
115 metres in width, and 44 in height, with a thick-
ness of a wall of 14 met:es. Having passed through
a court flanked with lateral porticoes, the traveller
enters the interior of the temple, consisting of a
forest of not less than 134 columns supporting
gigantic blocks of granite, which form the ceiling.
It has been calculated that 100 men could stand
together on each of the capitals of these columns !
[he other parts of the sanctuary are in ruins, but
what remains of them testifies to tho grandeur they
boasted nearly 4,000 years ago. For the oldest
remains of the Great Temple, near the sanctuary,
belong to the reign of Osortasen, a contemporary
of Joseph, and date from the 20th century before
our era. This temple was successively enlarged by
Amenophis 1., Touthmosis 1., IL, and 111., Meneph-
tha 1., Sesostris and Rhamses 11., who finished
it in the 16th century before Jesus Christ.

CONTRAST OF COLOURS,

_
A few weeks ago M. Plateau sent in a paper to
the French Academy of Sciences, in which he con-
cluded that M. Claevreul's law of the simultaneous
contrast of colours was not applicable to one parti-
cular case, viz., that when, from a certain distance,
a very narrow streak of colour is viewed on a ground
of another colour, it seems to combine with the
colour of the ground, instead of appearing modified
by the complementary colour of the ground, as
it ought to do by the law of contrast. This law,
as stated by M. Chevreul, is as follows The
mixture of two simple colours gives a pare binary
colour, viz.:—orange, by red
and yellow; green,
by blue and yellow, and violet by blue and red.
—2. Three simple colours, or two colours which
are complementary of each other, give either
black or a normal grey, composed of either red and
green, yellow and violet, or blue and orange.--3.
If the proportion of the three colours, or of two com-
plementary ones mixed together do not give black
or a normal grey, because of the predominance of
ono of the colours, then the result of the mixture is
either black or grey, with a dash of the dominant
colour in it. Now, if two zones of different colours
and the same dimensions be placel in juxtaposition
and two other zones of the same colours respec-
tively be placed separately, and at some distance
from each of the former, in order to judge of the
effect, it will bo found that a simple colour can only
be modified by the addition of one of the two other
simple colours, and that a binary colour can only
be modified by one of the two simple colours of
which it is composed. Again, as to simultaneous
contrast, when two zones, placed side by side, and
differing both in tone and colour, are seen simul-
taneously, the lightest loses a part of its colour, and
the darkest increases in intensity, while the colour
of each assumes a shade of the complementary
colour of its neighbour. Hence the principle of
contrast is diametrically opposed to that of mixture,
nd M. Chevreul explains M. Plateau's phenomenon
by saying " that when the eyes of the spectator dis-
tinctly see the forms and colours of the model re-
produced, at a distance where the finite extent of
each element of colour ceases to be perceptible, then
the effects of vision no longer belong to the prin-
ciple of contrast, Lut to that of the mixture of
colours. 60 that, iu M, Plateau's narr ,w streak.
its colour is mixed wil" that of the ground, whin
the distance is such that the outlines of tho streak
are no longer perceptible.

THE PUFF PEELIMINARY.--The authoress of
"Sappho and Phaon" wrote thus to Mr. Boaden, a news-
paper editor :—" Mrs. It— Would thank her friend
Boaden fora dozen puffs for Sappho and Phaon: " By
a mistake of the postman, this note was delivered to Mr.
Bowden, the pastrycouk, who sent her this answer : —,c
Bowden's respectful compliments to Alrssh.
she is
—no—t,a and
should be very happy to serve her, but,
as
re-
gular customer, he cannot send the puff young s for the y, fOA 1'
••
without first receiving the money,"