Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/474

 Tf^S A History of Art in Ancient Egypt. Rameses I. and Seti ; Rameses II. did no more than carry on the work of his predecessors. He heard the chorus of admiration with which the completion of such a superb building must have been hailed, and we can easily understand that he was thereby incited to reproduce its happy arrangement and majestic propor- tions in the great temple which he was erecting in his own honour on the left bank of the river. Ambitious though he was, Rameses II. could not attempt to give the colossal dimensions of the great temple of Amen to what was, after all, no more than the chapel of his own tomb. The great hall at Karnak required three reigns, two of them very long ones, for its completion. In the Ramesseum an attempt was made to compensate for inferior size by extra care in the details and by the beauty of the workmanship. The tall columns of the central nave were no more than thirty-six feet high, including base and capital, the others were only twenty-five feet ; but they surpassed the pillars at Karnak by the elegance of their proportions. The admiration excited in us by the ruins of Karnak is mingled with astonishment, almost with stupefaction, but at the Rames- seum we are more charmed although we are less surprised. We see that, when complete, it must have had a larger share than its rival of that beauty into which merely colossal dimensions do not enter.^ Beyond the hall there are wide chambers, situated upon the major axis of the building, and each with its roof supported by eight columns. Beyond them again there is a fourth and smaller chamber which has only four columns. Round these rooms a number of smaller ones are gathered ; they are all in a very frag- mentary state, and among them no vestige of anything like a secos has been found. On the other hand, the bas-reliefs in one of the larger rooms seem to confirm the assertion of Diodorus, in his description of the Tomb of OsymandiaSy that the library was placed in this part of the building.^ The Ramesseum was formerly surrounded by brick structures of a peculiar character, some of which are yet to be found in good preservation at about 50 metres from the north face of the building. They consist of a double range of vaults closely 1 See Ebers, ^'Egypten, vol. ii. pp. 309 et seq. - Ibid., p. 312.