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 Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph brought back by
     Benedite.

Before this it had been little more than a deserted ruin:  he cleared out the debris, brought a population to the place; rebuilt the temple, enlarging it by aisles which extended its area threefold; and here he enthroned, along with the local divinities, a triad, in which Amonra and Sutkhu sat side by side with his own deified “double.”  The ruined walls, the overturned stelae, the obelisks recumbent in the dust, and the statues of his usurped predecessors, all bear his name.  His colossal figure of statuary sandstone, in a sitting attitude like that at the Eamesseum, projected from the chief court, and seemed to look down upon the confused ruin of his works.*