* The list inscribed on the base of the statue discovered by Mariette contains a large number of names belonging to Africa.  They are the same as those met with in the time of the XVIIIth dynasty, and were probably copied from some monument of Ramses II., who had himself perhaps borrowed them from a document of the time of Thutmosis III.  A bas- relief at Medinet-Habu shows him to us in the act of smiting a group of tribes, among which figure the Tepa, Doshrit, and “the humbled Kush;” this bas-relief was appropriated later on by Nectanebo.

What we know to be a fact is, that he secured to the valley of the Nile nearly twenty years of prosperity, and recalled the glories of the great reigns of former days, if not by his victories, at least by the excellence of his administration and his activity.  He planned the erection at Karnak of a hypostyle hall in front of the pylons of Ramses II., which should equal, if not surpass, that of Seti I.*

* These columns have been looked upon as triumphal pillars, designed to support statues or divine emblems.  Mariette thinks that they supported “an edifice in the architectural style of the kiosk at Philae and the small hypothral temple on the roof of Denderah.”  I am of opinion that the architect intended to make a hypostyle hall, but that when the columns were erected, he perceived that the great width of the aisle they formed would render the strength of the roof very doubtful, and so renounced the execution of his first design.

[Illustration:  142.jpg THE COLUMN OF TAHARQA, AT KARNAK]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Beato.

The columns of the central aisle were disposed in two lines of six pillars each, but only one of these now remains standing in its original place; its height, which is the same as that of Seti’s columns, is nearly sixty-nine feet.  The columns of the side aisles, like those which should have flanked the immense colonnade at Luxor, were never even begun, and the hall of Taharqa, like that of Seti I., remains unfinished to this day.  He bestowed his favour on Nubia and Ethiopia, as well as on Egypt proper; even Napata owed to his munificence the most beautiful portions of its temples.  The temple of Amon, and subsequently that of Mut, were enlarged by him; and he decorated their ancient halls with bas-reliefs, representing himself, accompanied by his mother and his wife, in attitudes of adoration before the deity.  The style of the carving is very good, and the hieroglyphics would not disgrace the walls of the Theban temples.  The Ethiopian sculptors and painters scrupulously followed the traditions of the mother-country, and only a few insignificant details of ethnic type or costume enable us to detect a slight difference between their works and those of pure Egyptian art.  At the other extremity of Napata, on the western side of the Holy Mountain, Taharqa excavated in the cliff a rock-hewn shrine, which he dedicated to Hathor and Bisu (Bes), the patron of jollity and happiness, and the god of music and of war.