though so much of the face is
gone, to be looking over to the monumental piles on the other side of
the river, which became gorgeous temples, after these throne-seats were
placed here--the most immovable thrones that have ever been established
on this earth!"[21]

[Illustration: THE TWIN COLOSSI OF AMENHOTEP III, AT THEBES.]

The design of erecting two such colossi must be attributed to the
monarch himself, and we must estimate, from the magnificence of the
design, the grandeur of his thoughts and the wonderful depth of his
artistic imagination; but the skill to execute, the genius to express in
stone such dignity, majesty, and repose as the statues possess, belongs
to the first-rate sculptor, who turned the rough blocks of stone, hewn
by the masons in a distant quarry, into the glorious statues that have
looked down upon the plain for so many ages. The sculptors of Egyptian
works are, in general, unknown; but, by good fortune, in this particular
case, the name of the artist has remained on record, and he has himself
given us an account of the feelings with which he saw them set up in the
places where they still remain. The sculptor, who bore the same name as
his royal master, _i.e._ Amenhotep or Amen-hept, declares in the
exultation of his heart: "I immortalized the name of the king, and no
one has done the like of me in my works. I executed two portrait-statues
of the king, astonishing for their breadth and height; their completed
form dwarfed the temple tower--forty cubits was their measure; they were
cut in the splendid sandstone mountain on either side, the eastern and
the western. I caused to be built eight ships, whereon the statues were
carried up the river; they were emplaced in their sublime temple; they
will last as long as heaven. A joyful event was it when they were landed
at Thebes and raised up in their place."

A peculiar and curious interest attaches to one--the more eastern--of
the two statues. It was known to the Romans of the early empire as "The
Vocal Memnon," and formed one of the chief attractions which drew
travellers to Egypt, from the fact, which is quite indisputable, that at
that time, for two centuries or perhaps more, it emitted in the early
morning a musical sound, which was regarded as a sort of standing
miracle. The fact is mentioned by Strabo, Pliny the elder, Pausanias,
Tacitus, Juvenal, Lucian, Philostratus, and others, and is recorded by a
number of ear-witnesses on the lower pa