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Linant supposed "Lake Moeris" to have extended over the whole of the low-lying land which skirts the Libyan cliffs between Illahûn and Medinet el Fayûm; but recent explorations have proved that the dikes by which this pretended reservoir was bounded are modern works, erected probably within the last two hundred years.
There were even some which combined gold with sculptured ivory, ebony, and precious stones, thus closely resembling the chryselephantine statues of the Greeks. Aided by the bas-relief subjects of Karnak, Medinet Habû, and Denderah, as well as by the statues in wood and limestone which have come down to our day, we can tell exactly what they were like.
On the walls of the temple of Medînet Habû, Ramses III depicted the portraits of the conquered heroes who had fallen before the Egyptian onslaught, and he called them heroes, tuher in Egyptian, fully recognizing their Berserker gallantry. Goliath the giant was, then, a Greek; certainly he was of Cretan descent, and so a Pelasgian.
Three hundred pounds was the amount that he had made up his mind to expend, and such a sum does not go far in excavations. During his visit of the previous year Smith had marked the place where he meant to dig. It was in the cemetery of old Thebes, at the wild spot not far from the temple of Medinet Habu, that is known as the Valley of the Queens.
The mask of Rameses II. shows no sign of paint, except a black line which accentuates the form of the eye. Standing upright, they might almost be taken for two of the caryatid statues from the first court at Medinet Habû, though on a smaller scale. The bodies are represented as bandaged, and but vaguely indicate the contours of the human form.
We can trace it back to the Egyptian monuments of the nineteenth and twentieth dynasties. Ramses II., the Pharaoh of the Oppression, has inscribed it on the walls of Karnak, and Ramses III., who must have reigned while the Israelites were still in the wilderness, enumerates the "Yordan" at Medînet Habu among his conquests in Palestine.
In his temple palace at Medînet Habu he has left a record of the conquests that he made in Syria. The great cities of the coast were untouched.
Slaves waited on them, and filled their earthen beakers with yellow beer. The scandalous pictures in the so-called kiosk of Medinet Habu, the caricatures in an indescribable papyrus at Turin, confirm these statements. "My arms ache; the mob of slaves get more and more dirty and refractory."
Almost the whole extent of eight miles along the river is covered with magnificent portals, obelisks decorated with most beautiful sculptures, forests of columns, and long avenues of sphynxes and colossal statues. The most remarkable monuments, the ruins of which remain, are the temples of Carnac, Luxor, the Memnonium or temple of Memnon, and the temple of Medinet Abu.
We had to break through it, as firemen dash through the smoke of a burning house; and when our arabeahs stopped at the foot of a mountainous mound, about a mile out of Medinet, the dust had come too. Scrambling up, with the wind on our backs, we began to breathe; but it was not until we had ascended to the old guard house on top of the pottery strewn height, that we could draw a clean breath.
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