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In all my life I have never so understood the utter impotence and triviality of humanity as I felt it then. The ship, though not in measure with the colossi of later times, was yet a huge mass as measured by the man, and she was no more than a cork on the tide.
Towering structures hewn by water and wind from the basalt mass of the island rose like colossi along the entrance to the bay; beyond, a glimpse of great black battlements framed a huge crater. A dangerous bay in the lee wind with a bad holding-ground. We manoeuvered for ten minutes to land, but the shelving beach of black stone with no rim of sand proved a puzzle even to Grelet.
"And what dost thou predestine to me?" inquired Vatinius. "Apis bless thee! Thou didst arrange such splendid games in Beneventum that I cannot wish thee ill. Make a pair of boots for the sphinx, whose paws must grow numb during night-dews; after that thou will make sandals for the Colossi which form the alleys before the temples. Each one will find there a fitting occupation.
First, to give the visitor an idea of the magnitude of the colossi of the ancient Egyptians, let him notice from the southern extremity of the saloon the gigantic cast of the face of Sesostris, placed against the southern wall of the central saloon.
And he wanted, he longed, to see the wonders that were so near him in the night; Karnak with its pylons, its halls, its statues; the Colossi sitting side by side in their plain, with the springing crops about their feet; the fallen King in the Ramesseum, and that sad King who gazes for ever into the void beneath the mountain.
The Libyan chain, with its rosy light, and its sapphire blue shadows, bounded the horizon and formed a background to the giant buildings of Rameses, Amenhôtep, and Amen Phtases; the pylons with their sloping angles, the walls with their spreading cornices, the colossi with their hands resting on their knees, stood out, gilded by the sunbeams, their size undiminished by distance.
Ruder heads stand amazed at those prodigious pieces of nature whales, elephants, dromedaries, and camels; these, I confess, are the colossi and majestic pieces of her hand: but in these narrow engines there is more curious mathematics; and the civility of these little citizens more neatly sets forth the wisdom of their Maker.
Lysias hurried to them through the grove, patted their shining necks with soothing words, and stood looking down at the vast city at his feet, over which hung a film of violet mist at the solemn Pyramids, over which the morning glow flung a gay robe of rose-color on the huge temple of Ptah, with the great colossi in front of its pylons on the Nile, mirroring the glory of the sky, and on the limestone hills behind the villages of Babylon and Troy, about which he had, only yesterday, heard a Jew at the king's table relating a legend current among his countrymen to the effect that these hills had been obliged to give up all their verdure to grace the mounts of the sacred city Hierosolyma.
The Bettus are not temples in the ordinary sense but courtyards surrounding gigantic images of a saint named Gommateśvara who is said to have been the son of the first Tîrthankara . The largest of these colossi is at Sravana Belgola.
What feudal splendour, and what Gothic ceremonies; what tilts and tournaments, and what ecclesiastical festivals, could rival the vast, the beautiful, and the solemn magnificence of the old Egyptians? Crossing the river to Western Thebes, we arrive at two seated colossi, one of which is the famous musical statue of Memnon.
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