Page:Poetical works of Mathilde Blind.djvu/482

 456 crowd was a lovely boy of sixteen, who attracted the attention of artists and photographers two or three winters ago. He had the elegant proportions of a Tanagra statuette, and was so constantly asked to sit for his portrait that he must have thought that that was the end and aim of all tourists. Finally, he was carried off to the World's Fair with other curiosities of Egypt. When the Beeshareens returned to Assouan he was not amongst them, and rumour says that he got as far as Marseilles, where he utterly vanished. This tribe dress their profuse black hair in quite an extraordinary fashion. It is worn in countless little plaits, with a high, fuzzy bunch in the centre. I have heard it said that they wear it thus in memory of their descent from one of the lost tribes of Israel.

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This unfinished Colossus of red granite was discovered by two English officers while riding in the desert round Assouan. The scene is one of extraordinary desolation. The ash-coloured sand, broken by blue-black ridges, is a chaos of scattered stones and boulders which might be part of a landscape in the moon. The statue is believed to be that of Amenhotep III., to whom we owe the two Colossi of the Plain, of which one is the famous "Vocal Memnon." He was also the Egyptian Nimrod, and on one of his lion-hunting expeditions to the South is said to have met a beautiful young maiden, whom he married, though she was neither Egyptian nor of royal race. She was that famous Queen Thi who introduced the worship of the Sun's disk into Egypt.