DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4372#0184
168
the labour and exertions that must have been used for its de-
struction are most astonishing. It could only have been bro
about with the help of military engines, and must then have
"been the work of a length of time. Its fall has carried alom>-
with it the whole wall of the temple which stood within its reach.
It was not without great difficulty and danger that we could
climb on its shoulder and neck; and in going from thence upon
its chest, I was assisted by my Arab servant, who walked by my
side, in the hieroglyphical characters engraven on the arm.
The two other colossal statues, called also by some the statues
of Memnon, are in the plain, about half way between the Desert
and the river. The inundation had hardly left them early in
January, and we had some difficulty in reaching them on that
account. They are about fifty feet high, and seated each on a
pedestal six feet in height, eighteen long, and fourteen broad.
The stone of which they are formed is a hard reddish gres. From
the action of the weather it is in many places discoloured, and
often appears of a black, gray, brown, and whitish hue.
Few monuments of antient magnificence have as yet given
more subject for discussion among the Egyptian antiquaries,
than the identification of the statue of Memnon, or rather of
that statue from which was said to proceed a certain mysterious
sound every morning at sun-rise. This contest has arisen from
the contradictory accounts given of it by the geographers, natural
historians, and poets of antiquity. The French have adopted
the opinion of those who claim this appellation for the fallen
colossus at the temple they call the Menmonion. Pococke on
the other hand, and I am inclined to prefer the opinion of our
countryman, gives it decidedly in favour of the Northernmost
of the two I have last mentioned.
Strabo simply says, that on the opposite bank of the river,
where
the labour and exertions that must have been used for its de-
struction are most astonishing. It could only have been bro
about with the help of military engines, and must then have
"been the work of a length of time. Its fall has carried alom>-
with it the whole wall of the temple which stood within its reach.
It was not without great difficulty and danger that we could
climb on its shoulder and neck; and in going from thence upon
its chest, I was assisted by my Arab servant, who walked by my
side, in the hieroglyphical characters engraven on the arm.
The two other colossal statues, called also by some the statues
of Memnon, are in the plain, about half way between the Desert
and the river. The inundation had hardly left them early in
January, and we had some difficulty in reaching them on that
account. They are about fifty feet high, and seated each on a
pedestal six feet in height, eighteen long, and fourteen broad.
The stone of which they are formed is a hard reddish gres. From
the action of the weather it is in many places discoloured, and
often appears of a black, gray, brown, and whitish hue.
Few monuments of antient magnificence have as yet given
more subject for discussion among the Egyptian antiquaries,
than the identification of the statue of Memnon, or rather of
that statue from which was said to proceed a certain mysterious
sound every morning at sun-rise. This contest has arisen from
the contradictory accounts given of it by the geographers, natural
historians, and poets of antiquity. The French have adopted
the opinion of those who claim this appellation for the fallen
colossus at the temple they call the Menmonion. Pococke on
the other hand, and I am inclined to prefer the opinion of our
countryman, gives it decidedly in favour of the Northernmost
of the two I have last mentioned.
Strabo simply says, that on the opposite bank of the river,
where