In Nubia, beyond the First Cataract, is the renowned rock-hewn temple of
Ipsambul, the front of which is adorned with four gigantic portrait-
statues of Rameses II., seventy feet in height. This temple has been
pronounced the greatest and grandest achievement of Egyptian art.

SCULPTURE: SPHINXES AND COLOSSI.--A strange immobility, due to the
influence of religion, attached itself, at an early period, to Egyptian
art. The artist, in the portrayal of the figures of the gods, was not
allowed to change a single line in the conventional form. Hence the
impossibility of improvement in sacred sculpture. Wilkinson says that
Menes would have recognized the statue of Osiris in the Temple of Amasis.
Plato complained that the pictures and statues in the temples in his day
were no better than those made "ten thousand years" before.

The heroic, or colossal size of many of the Egyptian statues excites our
admiration. The two colossi at Thebes, known as the "Statues of Memnon,"
are forty-seven feet high, and are hewn each from a single block of
granite. The appearance of these time-worn, gigantic figures, upon the
solitary plain, is singularly impressive. "There they sit together, yet
apart, in the midst of the plain, serene and vigilant, still keeping their
untired watch over the lapse of ages and the eclipse of Egypt."

One of these statues acquired a wide reputation among the Greeks and
Romans, under the name of the "Vocal Memnon." When the rays of the rising
sun fell upon the colossus, it emitted low musical tones, which the
Egyptians believed to be the greeting of the statue to the mother-sun.
[Footnote: It is probable that the musical notes were produced by the
action of the sun upon the surface of the rock while wet with dew. The
phenomenon was observed only while the upper part of the colossus, which