Wilkinson, John Gardner: Topographie of Thebes, and general view of Egypt: being a short account of the principal objects worthy of notice in the valley of the Nile, to the second cataracte and Wadi Samneh, with the Fyoom, Oases and eastern desert, from Sooez to Bertenice (London, 1835)

12 TOPOGRAPHY Ob- THEBES. [Chap. I.

ducing those fragments to the state in which they
now appear. The fissures seen across the head,
and in the pedestal, are the work of a later period,
when some of these blocks were cut for millstones
by the Arabs, but its previous overthrow will pro-
bably be coeval with the Persian invasion. To say
that this is the largest statue in Egypt will convey
no idea of the gigantic size or enormous weight of
a mass, which, from an approximate calculation,
exceeded, when entire, nearly three times the solid
content of the great obelisk of Karnak,* and weighed
about eight hundred and eighty-seven tons five
hundred weight and a half.

No building in Thebes corresponds with the de-
scription given of the tomb of Osymandyas by
Hecatseus. Diodorus, who quotes his work, gives
the dimensions of the first or outer court, two
plethra, or one hundred and eighty-one feet eight
inches English, agreeing very nearly with the
breadth, but not the length of that now before us;
but the succeeding court, of four plethra, neither
agrees with this, nor can agree with that of any
other Egyptian edifice ; since the plan of an Egyp-
tian building invariably requires a diminution,f

* This obelisk weighs about two hundred and ninety-seven
tons ten hundred weight and two-thirds, allowing two thousand
six hundred and fifty ounces to a cubic foot.

f The very door-ways decrease as they approach the sekos, or
adytum, and the consequent deception in perspective adds con-
siderably to the apparent length of these buildings.