The originals, which had, as may be supposed, suffered considerably from the effects of time, were restored by Thorwaldsen, the Dane, whose conscientious spirit and thorough appreciation of the antique give assurance of the correctness of the interesting examples now before us.
THE LECTURE ROOM.
Through the doorway which is in the corner to the right of the first set of Ægina marbles, is fitted up a spacious Lecture Room, with every accommodation for Dissolving Views and other illustrations. It comprises the whole of the “Queen’s Corridor,” so called from the private apartments of Her Majesty, which are to the left.
Continuing onwards, we obtain a fine view of the North Transept, with its noble avenue of sphinxes and palm-trees, terminating with
THE COLOSSAL EGYPTIAN FIGURES,
which are from the temple of Rameses the Great at Aboo Simbel, in Nubia. These immense seated statues towering to the roof of the Transept afford us some adequate idea of the stupendous magnitude and passive grandeur which characterise the monuments of ancient Egyptian art. Their height is sixty-five feet.
It may be remembered that in the Egyptian Court we directed the attention of the visitor to a model of the temple at Aboo Simbel; on the façade of which were four statues of Rameses the Great. Two of these statues are here reproduced on the scale of the originals, the smaller figures around them representing the mother, wife, and daughter of the king.
The temple of Aboo Simbel, in Nubia, is excavated from the rock, and was first discovered by Burckhardt, the traveller; the accumulated sand of centuries, which then covered it, was removed by order of Belzoni, the first, with Captains Irby and Mangles, to pass its long-closed entrance. The interior was covered with paintings and hieroglyphics relating to Rameses the Great, and the date of the temple has been consequently placed at about 1560 B.C.
The sphinxes which formed the avenue are cast from one preserved in the Louvre, the writing engraved on which presents us with a curious but not uncommon instance of a custom that prevailed amongst the Egyptian monarchs, and to which we referred when describing the Egyptian Court. On one side of the shoulder the name “Pthalomen Miotph” is written in hieroglyphics, and on the other shoulder is the name of Shishak I. The last-named lived about 1000 B.C., and the first nearly two hundred years before him. Other instances occur where the name of the original founder has been erased altogether, in order to make way for the name of some comparatively modern king.
We are now standing at the foot of what represents one of the largest-known trees in the world. This tree grew, one of a group of such monsters, on the Sierra Nevada in California. When flourishing, it rose to the astounding height of nearly 400 feet. Several in the same district which are now standing are 300 feet in height. The bark of this tree has been arranged and fitted up as it grew, to give us some idea of its gigantic proportions by the view of a part. The wood is a particularly light cedar; and has been considered as of the same kind as that cedar of Lebanon employed by Solomon in the building of the Jewish temple. Dr. Lindley has named it the Wellingtonia gigantea, and has fixed its age at 4000 years. This then must have been a great tree before the ancient rock tombs of Aboo Simbel were hewn for the great Rameses.