Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/470

 376 A History of Art ix Ancient Egypt. upon the faith of Strabo's identification of Ismandes and Memnon.^ It is to Champollion that this building owes the restoration of its true title, under which it is now generally known. Without being so colossal as Karnak, the size of the Ramesseum would astonish us anywhere but in Egypt. When it was com- plete, it must have been as large as Luxor before the additions of Rameses II. were made, if not larger. The first pylon was 226 feet wide; the whole of its upper part is destroyed. ^ Immediately behind this pylon comes a vast peristylar court, almost square on plan (186 feet by 173). On the left the remains of a double colonnade exist, which must at one time have extended along at least two sides of the quadrangle. At the further end of this court and directly facing the back of the pylon, was a colossal statue of Rameses. Although seated, this statue was more than 56 feet high ; its fragments now cover a con- siderable amount of the courtyard. A grand doorway, pierced through the centre of the wall upon which the defeat of the Khetas is painted, leads to a second court, a little less extensive than the first. Right and left there are porticos, each with a double range of columns. On the side of the entrance and on that opposite to it there are single ranges of Osiride figures. Many of these figures are still standing ; they are 3 i feet high. Three flights of steps lead up from this court into a vestibule ornamented with two colossal busts of Rameses and with a row of columns. From this vestibule the hypostyle hall is reached by three doorways of black granite. It measures 136 feet wide and 103 deep. Its roof is supported by forty-eight columns, in eiofht ranofes of six each, counting from front to rear. Five of these eight ranges are still standing and still afford support to a part of the ceiling. This latter is painted with golden stars ^ Strabo, xvii. i. 42. In another passage (xvii. i. 46) he seems to place the Memnonium close to the two famous colossi. He would, therefore, seem rather to have had in view an " Amenophium," the remains of which have been discovered in the immediate neighbourhood of the two colossi. The French savants suspected this to be the case, but they often defer to the opinions of their immediate predecessors among Egyptian travellers. (^Description generale de Thebes, section iii.) 2 This pylon stands in the foreground of our view (Fig. 220). The face which is here shown was formerly covered — as we may judge from the parts which remain — with pictures of battles ; and that we might not have to actually invent scenes of combat for our restoration, we have borrowed the ornamentation of the first pylon of tlie Temple of Khons. The scale of our cut is too small, however, to show any details.