Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/102

84 could have thrust one of those tremendous plinths into the position of that overhanging horror.

Karnak is the greatest of the ruins of hundred-gated Thebes, as perhaps it is the greatest ruin of the world, but it is only one of many monuments, the least of which would suffice to make Luxor and its surroundings famous. For here, on the west bank of the Nile, are the Ramesseum, and the exquisite temple of Hathor at Medinet Habu, and those wonderful rock-built Tombs of the Kings which were rescued by so strange a series of chances from the hands of their Arab exploiters but a few years ago. Above all, here are those two dread effigies of Amenophis, the Colossi who sit for ever gazing side by side from the desert border over the green plain towards the Nile and that sunrise which was fabled to draw from the granite lips of the northern figure its mysterious morning song. Perhaps no Egyptian monument more keenly excites the interest of the Western