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 few Arabs in
the boat, and some at each side, with a lever of palm-wood,
as I had nothing else. At the middle of the bridge
I put a sack filled with sand, that, if the Colossus
should run too fast into the boat, it might be stopped.
In the ground behind the Colossus I had a piece of
a palm-tree planted, round which a rope was twisted,
and then fastened to its ear, to let it descend gradually.
I set a lever at work on each side; at the same time
that the men in the boat were pulling, others were
slackening the ropes, and others shifting the rollers
as the Colossus advanced.