Not far from it Amenemhat erected a huge temple,
such as had never been built before, and never was built again,
even in that land of gigantic structures. The great building was
erected, in a taste eminently characteristic of the Middle Kingdom,
of great blocks of fine limestone and crystalline quartzite. It has
long since disappeared, having been used as a quarry for thousands
of years; but the size of the site, which can still be traced,
shows that in actual area the temple covered a space of ground
within which Karnak, Luqsor, and the Ramesseum, huge as they all
are, could quite well have stood together.
Even in the time of Herodotus enough was still remaining of this
vast building to excite his profound wonder and admiration, and it
seemed to him a more remarkable structure than even the Pyramids. 'It
has,' he says, 'twelve courts enclosed with walls, with doors opposite
each other, six facing the north, and six the south, contiguous to
one another, and the same exterior wall encloses them. It contains
two kinds of rooms, some under ground, and some above ground over
them, to the number of 3,000, 1,500 of each.' He was not allowed
to inspect the underground chambers. 'But the upper ones, which
surpass all human works, I myself saw; for the passages through
the corridors, and the windings through the courts, from their
great variety, presented a thousand occasions of wonder as I passed
from a court to the rooms, and from the rooms to halls, and to
other corridors from the halls, and to other courts from the rooms.
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