re be indicated ; but to this it might be objected that Gournah is situated in the lower and not the upper part of Thebes ; that at Gournah there are no great colonnades and no obelisks ; and that, moreover, for some reason at present unknown to us, the erection of obelisks seems to have been almost wholly confined to the eastern bank of the Nile. It is, however, possible that the works here enumerated may not all have been executed for one and the same Temple. The "sacred edifice in the upper gate of the Abode of Amen" might be the Temple of Luxor, which Rameses did in fact adorn with the only obelisks we know to be his in Thebes ; the monument erected by him to his Divine Father Amen (evidently a new structure) would scarcely be any other than the Ramesseum ; while the "very, very great colonnades," which are expressly specified as additions, would seem as if they could only belong to the Hypostyle Hall of Karnak. The question is at all events interesting ; and it is pleasant to believe that in the Munich statue we have not only a portrait of one who at Karnak played the part of Michael Angelo to some foregone and forgotten Bramante, but who was also the Ictinus of the Ramesseum. For the Ramesseum is the Parthenon of Thebes.
The sun was sinking and the shadows were lengthening when, having made the round of the principal ruins, we at length mounted our donkeys and turned towards Luxor. To describe all that we saw after leaving the Great Hall would fill a chapter. Huge obelisks of shining granite – some yet erect, some shattered and prostrate ; vast lengths of sculptured walls covered with wondrous battle subjects, sacerdotal processions, and elaborate chronicles of the deeds of Kings ; ruined courtyards surrounded by files of headless statues ; a sanctuary built all of polished granite, and engraven like a gem ; a second Hall of Pillars dating back to the early days of Thothmes the Third ; labyrinths of roofless chambers ; mutilated colossi, shattered pylons, fallen columns, unintelligible foundations and hieroglyphic inscriptions without end, were glanced at, passed by, and succeeded by fresh wonders. I dare not say how many small outlying temples we saw in the course of that rapid survey. In one place we came upon an undulating tract of coarse halfeh grass, in the midst of which, battered, defaced, forlorn, sat a weird company of green granite Sphinxes and lioness-headed Basts. In another, we saw a magnificent colossal hawk upright on his pedestal in the midst of a bergfall of ruins. More avenues of Sphinxes, more pylons, more colossi, were passed before the road we took in returning brought us round to that by which we had come. By the time we reached the Sheykh's tomb, it was nearly dusk. We rode back across the plain, silent and bewildered. Have I not said that it was like a dream?
1 Arabic "kharûf," pronounced "haroof" – English, sheep.
2 This famous building is supposed by some to be identical both with the Memnonium of Strabo and the Tomb of Osymandias as described by Diodorus Siculus. Champollion, however, following the sense of the hieroglyphed legends, in which it is styled "The House of Rameses" (the Second), has given to it the more appropriate name of the Ramesseum.
3 Translated into French by the late Vicomte de Rougé under the title of Le Poëme de Pentaour, 1856 ; into English by Mr. Goodwin, 1858 ; and again by Professor Lushington in 1874. See Records of the Past, vol. ii.
4 According to the great inscription of Abydos translated by Professor Maspero, Rameses II would seem to have been in some sense King from his birth, as if the throne of Egypt came to him through his mother, and as if his father, Seti I, had reigned for him during his infancy as King-Regent. Some inscriptions, indeed, show him to have received homage even before his birth.
5 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 