Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 2.djvu/268

 240 A History of Art in Ancient Egypt. temples came nearly as high as their knees, but oftener they failed to reach their ankle-bones. The New Empire had a mania for these colossal figures. It sprinkled them over the whole country, but at Thebes they are more thickly gathered than elsewhere. In the immediate neighbourhood of the two seated statues of Amenophis III., the savants of the French Commission found the remains of fifteen more colossi.^ There were at least as many on the right bank. On the avenue leading through the four southern pylons at Karnak, the same explorers found twelve colossal monoliths, each nearly thirty-five feet high but all greatly mutilated, and the former existence of others was revealed to them by fragments scattered about the ground. They were able to reckon up eighteen altogether on this south side of the building.^ Similar stone giants peopled the other religious or political capitals of Egypt — Abydos, Memphis, Tanis, Sais, etc. The largest of all, however, are the colossi at Ipsamboul representing Rameses II. They are about seventy feet high. Among those cut from one enormous block brought from Syene or elsewhere, the best known are those of Amenophis III. at Thebes. They are fifty-two feet high without the pedestal. But the statue of Rameses II., which stood in the second court of the Ramesseum, must have been more than fifty-six feet high, as we may calculate from the fragments which remain. The head is greatly mutilated but the foot is over thirteen feet long.^ These statues were generally seated in the attitude which we have already described in speaking of Chephren and Sebek-hotep. Some, however, were standing, such as the colossal figure of Rameses which stood before the Temple of Ptah at Memphis. This figure, which is about forty-four feet high, is cut from a single block of very fine and hard limestone. It lies face downwards and surrounded by palm trees, in a depression of the soil near the village of Mitrahineh. In this position it is covered by the annual inundation. The Eno^lish, to whom it belonQ;-s, have hitherto failed to take possession of it owing to the difficulty of transport, and yet it is one of the most careful productions of ' Descriptio7i de PJigypte, Autigiiith, vol. ii. p. 182. " Description^ Anti(]uitcs, vol. ii. p. 105. ^ Ch. Blanc, Voya^i:^e dans la I/aufe-Egypfe, p. 208. It has been calculated that this colossus weiirhcd about 1220 tons.