Wilson, Charles W. [Editor]; Fenn, Harry [Ill.]: Picturesque Palestine: Sinai and Egypt ; in 2 volumes (Band 2) (New York, 1883)

434

PICTURESQUE PALESTINE.

Next to the Rameseum
once stood another memorial
temple, sacred to Amenoph III.,
whose tomb is in the western
valley in the mountains behind.
Not even the foundations of the
Amenopheum are now to be
traced, but in front of where
the pylons must once have been
the two colossi which once
guarded the temple still stand
side by side amid the green
fields. These twin giants, repre-
senting Amenoph III. seated
with his hands on his knees,
are perhaps, after the Pyramids,
the best-known monuments in
Egypt. That on the north (the
nearest in the cut, page 437)
is the famous "Vocal Memnon,"
which Roman visitors identified,
with the son of Tithonus and
Eos, and forthwith covered the
throne and legs of the colossus
with inscriptions in honour of
the valiant hero who came to
the aid of the Trojans, and
slew Antilocus, and withstood
the godlike Achilles himself.
The identification probably
arose out of a misunderstanding
of an Egyptian word ; but an
accident invested the mistake
with a romantic odamour. The
northern statue, once, like its
mate, a monolith of breccia,
fifty-one feet high (or with the
pedestal sixty-four), was shat-
tered to its middle—it is said