DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14563#0188
MEMNON STILL SOUNDS.
153
plain begging a few pence of the Hawagee, or offering them
fragments of mummies and antiques, and by night hide
themselves in the arches of falling temples, and the broken
tombs of kings. Not their present master, the redoubtable
Abbas Pasha, as distinguished in vice as his grandfather
Mohammed Ali was in policy and in arms, whose relentless
conscription for his hybrid army now drives the peasantry
from the plain to the mountains. Not the far off Sultan,
whose tottering throne is braced by the bayonets of England
and France, against the colossus of the North. No, none
of all these. The spirit that here rules is still the spirit
of the old dynasty, symbolized by these colossi enthroned in
solitary grandeur in the centre of the plain. It was meet
that these should stand, and stand alone; — that while all
their fellows are prostrate and buried in the sand drifts, or
in the mud of the Nile, and the temple that they guarded
is a shapeless mound, they should stand amid the ripening
grain that covers the grave of their old empire, to assert
that empire fresh and imperishable in the minds of men.
It was meet that alone, with the naked mountains as their
background, and the empty plain around them, and the river
shrinking in the distance or inundating their base, and the
excavated columns of Luxor looming beyond, they should
sit here with their hands upon their knees, their heads erect,
their brows serene, in that sublime repose with which they
first sat down amid the spoils of victory, and the grandeur
of consolidated power. They tell us more than all history,
that there were giants in those days.
The Assyrian sculptor achieved his triumph, when to the
face of a man, he added the body of an ox, the feet of a
lion, and the wings of an eagle, — wisdom, strength, domin-
ion, swiftness, all symbolized in one. But did not the
Egyptian sculptor achieve a greater triumph, when he
magnified tenfold the human form, retaining all its propor-
153
plain begging a few pence of the Hawagee, or offering them
fragments of mummies and antiques, and by night hide
themselves in the arches of falling temples, and the broken
tombs of kings. Not their present master, the redoubtable
Abbas Pasha, as distinguished in vice as his grandfather
Mohammed Ali was in policy and in arms, whose relentless
conscription for his hybrid army now drives the peasantry
from the plain to the mountains. Not the far off Sultan,
whose tottering throne is braced by the bayonets of England
and France, against the colossus of the North. No, none
of all these. The spirit that here rules is still the spirit
of the old dynasty, symbolized by these colossi enthroned in
solitary grandeur in the centre of the plain. It was meet
that these should stand, and stand alone; — that while all
their fellows are prostrate and buried in the sand drifts, or
in the mud of the Nile, and the temple that they guarded
is a shapeless mound, they should stand amid the ripening
grain that covers the grave of their old empire, to assert
that empire fresh and imperishable in the minds of men.
It was meet that alone, with the naked mountains as their
background, and the empty plain around them, and the river
shrinking in the distance or inundating their base, and the
excavated columns of Luxor looming beyond, they should
sit here with their hands upon their knees, their heads erect,
their brows serene, in that sublime repose with which they
first sat down amid the spoils of victory, and the grandeur
of consolidated power. They tell us more than all history,
that there were giants in those days.
The Assyrian sculptor achieved his triumph, when to the
face of a man, he added the body of an ox, the feet of a
lion, and the wings of an eagle, — wisdom, strength, domin-
ion, swiftness, all symbolized in one. But did not the
Egyptian sculptor achieve a greater triumph, when he
magnified tenfold the human form, retaining all its propor-