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Updated: May 25, 2025
The tourists viewed with languid interest the half-Greek art of the Nubian bas-reliefs; they climbed the hill of Korosko to see the sun rise over the savage Eastern desert; they were moved to wonder by the great shrine of Abou-Simbel, where some old race has hollowed out a mountain as if it were a cheese; and, finally, upon the evening of the fourth day of their travels they arrived at Wady Halfa, the frontier garrison town, some few hours after they were due, on account of a small mishap in the engine-room.
The oars no longer move, and we hear only the sighing of the wind and the lapping of the water against the columns and the bas-reliefs and then suddenly there comes the noise of a heavy body falling, followed by endless eddies.
The chamber in which I found myself had walls of bright emerald green, with all the brilliant transparency of the jewel; their surface broken by bas-reliefs of minutely perfect execution, and divided into panels each of which seemed to contain a series of distinct scenes, one above the other by living creepers with foliage of bright gold, and flowers sometimes pink, sometimes cream-white of great size, both double and single; the former mostly hemispherical and the latter commonly shaped as hollow cones or Avide shallow champagne glasses.
Besides the chief inscription on the pedestal, were sculptured various bas-reliefs; and the spectator, whose admiration for the Governor-general was not satiated with the colossal statue itself, was at liberty to find a fresh, personification of the hero, either in a torch-bearing angel or a gentle shepherd.
And indeed the smallest bits of marble, the maimed statues, the bas-reliefs in fragments, even the isolated limbs whether the divine arm of a nymph or the sinewy, shaggy thigh of a satyr evoke the splendour of a civilisation full of light, grandeur, and strength. * Best known in England, through Byron's lines, as the Dying Gladiator, though that appellation is certainly erroneous. Trans.
In the bas-reliefs in question they are placed before a stele with a rounded top, which is shown at the top of our engraving. Though practically absent from the great brick palaces, the column here played an important and conspicuous part. It furnished elegant and richly decorated supports for canopies of wool that softly rose and fell with the passing breeze.
It is a scene from the domestic life of the dead man, duly subordinated to the recumbent figure, which, when the monument was perfect, would have dominated the whole composition. Nothing in the range of Donatello's work surpasses these two bas-reliefs for harmonies of line and grouping, for choice of form, for beauty of expression, and for smoothness of surface-working.
She watched him dreamily is he made his way among the cinerary urns, the busts and statues and bas-reliefs that were a part of the stock in trade of her incongruous business associate.
In the terrace walls are niches containing cross-legged figures larger than life to the number of about four hundred, and both sides of all the terrace walls are covered with bas-reliefs crowded with figures, and carved in hard stone and which must therefore occupy an extent of nearly three miles in length!
Here and there, enclosed in the half-crumbling walls of brick, are fragments of stone bas-reliefs, very boldly cut; one of those in the best preservation represents a man with the head of an elephant, and the wings of a bat, devouring a child.
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