Nothing dishonours the halls of the interior, where silence has again descended, the vast silence of the noon of the desert.
In the reign of the Emperor Tiberius, men already marvelled at this temple, as at a relic of the most distant and nebulous past.

The geographer Strabo wrote in those days: "It is an admirable palace built in the fashion of the Labyrinth save that it has fewer galleries." There are galleries enough however, and one can readily lose oneself in its mazy turnings.

Seven chapels, consecrated to Osiris and to different gods and goddesses of his suite; seven vaulted chambers; seven doors for the processions of kings and multitudes; and, at the sides, numberless halls, corridors, secondary chapels, dark chambers and hidden doorways.
That very primitive column, suggestive of reeds, which is called in architecture the "plant column" and resembles a monstrous stem of papyrus, rises here in a thick forest, to support the stones of the blue ceilings, which are strewn with stars, in the likeness of the sky of this country.

In many cases these stones are missing and leave large openings on to the real sky above.

Their massiveness, which one might have thought would secure them an endless duration, has availed them nothing; the sun of so many centuries has cracked them, and their own weight, then, has brought them headlong to the ground.