ving been given
indiscriminately to various statues, conveys no proof of their
identity, since it represents only a mythical hero, whose fame reached
Greece many centuries before our hero. Generally, this young Memnon is
held to be a portrait of the great Sesostris, who was either the first
or second Rameses; but some authorities declare that the weight of
evidence goes in favour of Amenophis III., who was a pharaoh, or
monarch, flourishing more than fourteen centuries before Christ. It is
certain, however, that we have here a carefully-elaborated portrait of
an Egyptian hero who flourished many centuries before our era. The
features have all the prominent parts noticed by writers on Egyptian
sculpture as characteristic of the Egyptian style. Here are the
wonderfully high and prominent ears (which must have been invaluable
peculiarities to Egyptian wits), the thick Ethiopian lips, the coarse
nose, and the full eyes, all carefully and skilfully chiselled.
Certainly, when we recall the time, realise fully the antiquity and
the social state in which this great work was performed, we may see
the sculptor's dawning soul in the majestic repose of this head. The
lines are hard and stiff--have not the flow of the Parthenon
decorations; but here is nothing mean or poor,--all large, solid, and
carved with the force of a giant. The picturesque accounts of its
transmission from the Memnonium at Thebes to Alexandria are familiar
to the majority of readers, with the great Belzoni, with his
marvellous strength and energy, urging on the workmen. "I cannot help
observing," he tells us, "that it was no easy undertaking to put a
piece of granite of such bulk and weight on board a boat that, if it
received the weight on one side, would immediately upset; and, what is
more, this was to be done without the smallest help of any mechanical
contrivance, even a single tackle, and only with four poles and ropes,
as the water was about eighteen feet below the bank where the head was
to descend. The causeway I had made gradually sloped to the edge of
the water, close to the boat, and with the four poles I formed a
bridge from the bank into the centre of the boat, so that when the
weight bore on the bridge it pressed only on the centre of the boat.
The bridge rested partly on the causeway, partly on the side of the
boat, and partly on the centre of it. On the opposite side of the boat
I put some mats well filled with straw. I necessarily stationed a