[196] The sitting colossus of the Ramesseum was certainly the largest perfect statue in Egypt when Diodorus visited the Valley of the Nile, for the great standing colossus of Tanis had long before his time been cut up by Sheshonk III for building purposes; but that the Tanite colossus much exceeded the colossus of Ramesseum in height and bulk is placed beyond doubt by the scale of the fragments discovered by Mr. Petrie in the course of his excavations in 1884. According to his very cautious calculations, the figure alone of the Tanite was nine hundred inches, or seventy-five feet, high; or somewhere between seventy and eighty feet. “To this,” says Mr. Petrie, “we must add the height of the crown, which would proportionately be some fourteen and one-half feet. To this again must be added the base of the figure, which was thinner than the usual scale, being only twenty-seven inches thick. Thus the whole block appears to have been about one thousand one hundred inches, or say ninety-two feet, high. This was, so far as is known, the largest statue ever executed.” The weight of the figure is calculated by Mr. Petrie at about nine hundred tons; i. e., one hundred tons more than the colossus of the Ramesseum. That it stood upon a suitable pedestal cannot be doubted; and with the pedestal, which can scarcely have been less than eighteen or twenty feet in height, the statue must have towered some one hundred and twenty feet above the level of the plain. See “Tanis,” part i, pp. 22, 23. [Note to second edition.]
[197] The syenite colossus, of which the British Museum possesses the head, and which is popularly known as the Young Memnon, measured twenty-four feet in height before it was broken up by the French.
[198] See wood-cut No. 340 in Sir G. Wilkinson’s “Manners and Custums of the Ancient Egyptians,” vol. i, ed. 1871.
[199] Among these are Abot, or abode; meaning the abode of Amen; Ta-Uaboo, the mound; Ta-Api, the head or capital, etc. See “Recherches sur le nom Égyptien de Thèbes.” Chabas: 1863; “Textes Géographiques d’Edfoo,” J. de Rougé: “Revue Arch. Nouvelle Série,” vol. xii, 1865; etc.
[200] The “Great Harris Papyrus” is described by Dr. Birch as “one of the finest, best written and best preserved that has been discovered in Egypt. It measures one hundred and thirty-three feet long by sixteen and three-quarter inches broad, and was found with several others in a tomb behind Medinet Habu. Purchased soon after by the late A. C. Harris of Alexandria, it was subsequently unrolled and divided into seventy-nine leaves and laid down on cardboard. With the exception of some small portions which are wanting in the first leaf, the text is complete throughout.” The papyrus purports to be a post mortem address of the king, Rameses III, recounting the benefits he had conferred upon Egypt by his administration, and by his delivery of the country from foreign subjection. It also records the immense gifts which he had conferred on the temples of Egypt, of Amen at Thebes, Tum at Heliopolis, and Ptah at Memphis, etc. “The last part is addressed to the officers of the army, consisting partly of Sardinian and Libyan mercenaries, and to the people of Egypt, in the thirty-second year of his reign, and is a kind of posthumous panegyrical discourse, or political will, like that of Augustus discovered by Ancyra. The papyrus itself consists of the following divisions, three of which are preceded by large colored plates or vignettes: Introduction; donations to the Thebau deities; donations to the gods of Heliopolis; donations to the gods of Memphis; donations to the gods of the north and south; summary of donations; historical speech and conclusion. Throughout the monarch speaks in the first person, the list excepted.” Introduction to “Annals of Rameses III;” S. Birch. “Records of the Past,” vol. vi, p. 21; 1876.
[201] “Rameses III was one of the most remarkable monarchs in the annals of Egypt. A period of political confusion and foreign conquest of the country preceded his advent to the throne. His father, Setnecht, had indeed succeeded in driving out the foreign invaders and re-establishing the native dynasty of the Theban kings, the twentieth of the list of Manetho. But Rameses had a great task before him, called to the throne at a youthful age.... The first task of Rameses was to restore the civil government and military discipline. In the fifth year he defeated the Maxyes and Libyans with great slaughter when they invaded Egypt, led by five chiefs; and in the same year he had also to repulse the Satu, or eastern foreigners who had attacked Egypt. The maritime nations of the west, it appears, had invaded Palestine and the Syrian coast in his eighth year, and, after taking Carchemish, a confederation of the Pulusata, supposed by some to be the Pelasgi, Tekkaru or Teucri, Sakalusa or Siculi, Tanau or Daunians, if not Danai, and Uasasa or Osci, marched to the conquest of Egypt. It is possible that they reached the mouth of the eastern branch of the Nile. But Rameses concentrated an army at Taha, in Northern Palestine, and marched back to defend the Nile. Assisted by his mercenary forces, he inflicted a severe defeat on the confederated west, and returned with his prisoners to Thebes. In his eleventh year the Mashuasha or Maxyes, assisted by the Tahennu or Libyans, again invaded Egypt, to suffer a fresh defeat, and the country seems from this period to have remained in a state of tranquillity.... The vast temple at Medinet Habu, his palaces and treasury, still remain to attest his magnificence and grandeur; and if his domestic life was that of an ordinary Egyptian monarch, he was as distinguished in the battlefield as the palace. Treason, no doubt, disturbed his latter days, and it is not known how he died; but he expired after a reign of thirty-one years and some months, and left the throne to his son, it is supposed, about B.C. 1200.” See “Remarks Upon the Cover of the Granite Sarcophagus of Rameses III:” S. Birch, LL.D., Cambridge, 1876.
[202] “There is reason to believe that this is only a fragment of the building, and foundations exist which render it probable that the whole was originally a square of the width of the front, and had other chambers, probably in wood or brick, besides those we now find. This would hardly detract from the playful character of the design, and when colored, as it originally was, and with its battlements or ornaments complete, it must have formed a composition as pleasing as it is unlike our usual conceptions of Egyptian art.”—“Hist. of Architecture,” by J. Fergusson, Bk. i, ch. iv, p. 118, Lond., 1865.
[203] Medinet Habu continued, up to the period of the Arab invasion, to be inhabited by the Coptic descendants of its ancient builders. They fled, however, before Amr and his army, since which time the place has been deserted. It is not known whether the siege took place at the time of the Arab invasion, or during the raid of Cambyses; but, whenever it was, the place was evidently forced by the besiegers. The author of Murray’s “Hand-book” draws attention to the fact that the granite jambs of the doorway leading to the smaller temple are cut through exactly at the place where the bar was placed across the door.
[204] Herodotus, Bk. ii, chap. 122.
[205] “A Medinet Habou, dans son palais, il s’est fait représenter jouant aux dames avec des femmes qui, d’après certaines copies, semblent porter sur la tête les fleurs symboliques de l’Égypte supérieure et inférieure, comme les deésses du monde supérieur et inférieur, ou du ciel et de la terre. Cette dualité des deésses, qui est indiquée dans les scènes religieuses et les textes sacrés par la réunion de Satis et Anoucis, Pasht et Bast, Isis et Nephthys, etc., me fait penser que les tableaux de Medinet Habou peuvent avoir été considérés dans les légendes populaires comme offrant aux yeux l’allégorie de la scène du jeu de dames entre le roi et la deésse Isis, dont Hérodote a fait la Déméter Égyptienne, comme il a fait d’Osiris le Dionysus du même peuple.”—“Le Roi Rhampsinite et le Jeu des Dames,” par S. Birch. “Revue Arch: Nouvelle Série,” vol. xii, p. 58, Paris: 1865.