ined himself to be descended, and the same list of their names,
which we find engraved in the chapel of his father, appears on his
building also. Some ruins, lying beyond Abydos, are too formless to do
more than indicate the site of some of his structures. He enlarged
the temple of Harshafitu and that of Osiris at Heracleopolis, and, to
accomplish these works the more promptly, his workmen had recourse
for material to the royal towns of the IVth and XIIth dynasties; the
pyramids of Usirtasen II. and Snofrui at Medum suffered accordingly the
loss of the best part of their covering. He finished the mausoleum at
Memphis, and dedicated the statue which Seti had merely blocked out;
he then set to work to fill the city with buildings of his own
device--granite and sandstone chambers to the east of the Sacred Lake,*
monumental gateways to the south,** and before one of them a fine
colossal figure in granite.*** It lay not long ago at the bottom of a
hole among the palm trees, and was covered by the inundation every year;
it has now been so raised as to be safe from the waters. Ramses could
hardly infuse new life into all the provinces which had been devastated
years before by the Shepherd-kings; but Heliopolis,**** Bubastes,
Athribis, Patumu, Mendis, Tell Moqdam, and all the cities of the eastern
corner of the Delta, constitute a museum of his monuments, every object
within them testifying to his activity.

* Partly excavated and published by Mariette, and partly by
M. de Morgan. This is probably the temple mentioned in the
_Great Inscription of Abu Simbel_.

** These are probably those mentioned by Herodotus, when he
says that Sesostris constructed a propylon in the temple of
Hephaistos.

*** This is Abu-1-hol of the Arabs.

**** Ruins of the temple of Ra bear the cartouche of Ramses
II. "Cleopatra's Needle," transported to Alexandria by one
of the Ptolemies, had been set up by Ramses at Heliopolis;
it is probably one of the four obelisks which the
traditional Sesostris is said to have erected in that city,
according to Pliny.

He colonised these towns with his prisoners, rebuilt them, and set to
work to rouse them from the torpor into which they had fallen after
their capture by Ahmosis. He made a third capital of Tanis, which
rivalled both Memphis and Thebes.

[Illustration: 242.jpg THE COLOSSAL STATUE OF RAMSES II. AT MITRAHINEH]

Drawn by Fauch