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Updated: June 20, 2025
This was formerly the principal entrance, and the office of these colossi was to welcome the multitudes. But now the gates of honour flanked by obelisks of red granite, are obstructed by a litter of enormous ruins. And the courtyard has become a place voluntarily closed, where nothing of the outside world is any longer to be seen.
The small speos of Hathor, about a hundred paces to the northward, is of smaller dimensions. The façade is adorned with six standing colossi, four representing Rameses II., and two his wife, Nefertari. The hypostyle hall, however, is supported by six Hathor-headed pillars.
We fancy a field of battle before us, where time has fought with genius; and these mutilated limbs attest its victory, and our losses. After leaving the Vatican, Corinne conducted him to the Colossi of Mount Cavallo; these two statues represent, as it is said, Castor and Pollux. Each of the two heroes is taming with one hand a fiery steed.
Pools of water sparkled in the sunshine, the festoons of vines climbed on the arched arbours, and in the background stood out the gigantic pylons of the palace of Rameses Meïamoun, with its huge pylons, its enormous walls, its gilded and painted flagstaffs from which the colours blew out in the wind; and further to the north the two colossi sitting in postures of eternal immobility, mountains of granite in human shape, before the entrance to the Amenophium, showed through a bluish haze, half masking the still more distant Rhamesseium, and beyond it the tomb of the high-priest, but allowing the palace of Menephta to be seen at one of its angles.
He circled round the minaret. He cried to the Nile. He cried to the Colossi sitting in their plain, and to the yellow precipices of the mountains of Libya. He cried to Egypt: "Come to prayer! Come to prayer! There is no god but God. There is no god but God." The days of the gods were dead, and their ruined temple echoed with the proclamation of the one god of the Moslem world. "Come to prayer!
Then Maskull knelt as well, but he continued looking. It grew darker and darker, until all was like the blackest night. Sight and sound no longer existed; he was alone with his own spirit. Then one of the three Colossi came slowly into sight again. But it had ceased to be a statue it was a living person.
Then Hassan armed his grim Saracens and bade them stand in line upon the bulwarks, drawn scimitar in hand, a sight that seemed to frighten the Cypriotes at least they always rode away towards the great square tower of Colossi. At length Hassan would bear it no more.
Ûsertesen III., whose head and feet are in the Louvre, was appropriated by Amenhotep III., as the sphinx of the Louvre and the colossi of Gizeh were appropriated by Rameses II. Many museums possess specimens of supposed Ramesside Pharaohs which, upon more careful inspection, we are compelled to ascribe to the Thirteenth or Fourteenth Dynasty.
You must have understood life, you must have suffered, and the world was crumbling to pieces about you, you wept on its ruins and you despaired; and your mistresses were false; your friends calumniated, your compatriots misunderstood; and your heart was empty; death was in your eyes, and you were the very Colossi of grief.
The mechanics who had understood how to move the obelisks and colossi from the cataract to Alexandria, could here again find opportunity to test their brains and former skill.
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