DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4020#0059
AND NUBIA. 47
again, and to make him pay dearly for his insolence. This menace had an effect
upon him. He drew back to his entreaties that we would not land, at lead out
of respect to him. " If good fortune, said he, favours you sufficiently to escape"
the danger; yet you put me in the greater!: peril in the world, for the future.
The people of the country will never pardon me; and when hereafter I shall have
Occasion to come here again, and to go on more, they will murder me without
mercy, for having brought you into their country, from whence they will certainly
think that you have carried away treasures."
I wa s too much accustomed to such sort of discourses, to submit to them.
But as I perceived that the time passed away, and that I mould want a good deal
to make my researches, I was heiitating on the part that I mould take: when the
janidary, whom I have mentioned before, and who delighted in resolute attempts
(for these gentlemen think themselves more privileged than others) began to
threaten the reys, and immediately went on more with me. Some of our people
followed us, and we went across the plain, taking for our guides the two colosses
of which I have already made mention.
There was no more than a league of way to arrive thither, if we had been
able to march in a straight line ; but the plain being intersered by canals, and
covered with Turkish wheat, we were obliged to make many windings and turn- See Ptate
mgs, and three hours passed away before we were able to arrive near the colosses,
to make the drawings of them. With regard to the place where they are situated,
I have already observed that they are no more than about a league distant from
the Nile; and it is there the plain begins to rise, by means of the sind, which
reaches quite to the foot of the mountains.
At about two hundred paces from these colosfes, we see, on the cast and north
sides, some ruins of divers other statues, tumbled down ; and towards the south,
at the distance of half an hour's walk, there are frill other ruins, both ancient and
modern.
The colossal figures are marked in the plate a and b. They front the Nile.
The first seems to represent a man, and the second a woman. In other respeds,
they are both of the same size, and that size is prodigious. They have about
fifty Danisri feet in height, from the bases of the pedestals to, the summit of the
head. It was by their shadow that I determined this measure ; and by applying
the perch to it, I found that, from the sole of the feet to the knees there were
fifteen feet, which justifies the computation that I had made; for, according to the
ordinary proportion of a man, it follows from thence, that the height of each
figure is fifty feet, including the pedestals.
They are sitting upon stones almost cubical, of fifteen feet in height, and as
many in breadth, including in them the Isiac figures, which serve for ornament
to the two corners of each stone. The back part of each stone is higher than the
forepart, by a foot and a half.
The
again, and to make him pay dearly for his insolence. This menace had an effect
upon him. He drew back to his entreaties that we would not land, at lead out
of respect to him. " If good fortune, said he, favours you sufficiently to escape"
the danger; yet you put me in the greater!: peril in the world, for the future.
The people of the country will never pardon me; and when hereafter I shall have
Occasion to come here again, and to go on more, they will murder me without
mercy, for having brought you into their country, from whence they will certainly
think that you have carried away treasures."
I wa s too much accustomed to such sort of discourses, to submit to them.
But as I perceived that the time passed away, and that I mould want a good deal
to make my researches, I was heiitating on the part that I mould take: when the
janidary, whom I have mentioned before, and who delighted in resolute attempts
(for these gentlemen think themselves more privileged than others) began to
threaten the reys, and immediately went on more with me. Some of our people
followed us, and we went across the plain, taking for our guides the two colosses
of which I have already made mention.
There was no more than a league of way to arrive thither, if we had been
able to march in a straight line ; but the plain being intersered by canals, and
covered with Turkish wheat, we were obliged to make many windings and turn- See Ptate
mgs, and three hours passed away before we were able to arrive near the colosses,
to make the drawings of them. With regard to the place where they are situated,
I have already observed that they are no more than about a league distant from
the Nile; and it is there the plain begins to rise, by means of the sind, which
reaches quite to the foot of the mountains.
At about two hundred paces from these colosfes, we see, on the cast and north
sides, some ruins of divers other statues, tumbled down ; and towards the south,
at the distance of half an hour's walk, there are frill other ruins, both ancient and
modern.
The colossal figures are marked in the plate a and b. They front the Nile.
The first seems to represent a man, and the second a woman. In other respeds,
they are both of the same size, and that size is prodigious. They have about
fifty Danisri feet in height, from the bases of the pedestals to, the summit of the
head. It was by their shadow that I determined this measure ; and by applying
the perch to it, I found that, from the sole of the feet to the knees there were
fifteen feet, which justifies the computation that I had made; for, according to the
ordinary proportion of a man, it follows from thence, that the height of each
figure is fifty feet, including the pedestals.
They are sitting upon stones almost cubical, of fifteen feet in height, and as
many in breadth, including in them the Isiac figures, which serve for ornament
to the two corners of each stone. The back part of each stone is higher than the
forepart, by a foot and a half.
The