THE TEMPLES OF ABOO-SIMBEL. 489 In the morning, I found that we lay at the foot of the smaller temple. I quietly waited for my cup of coffee, for the morning reality was infinitely less grand than my vision of the night. I then climbed to the door and entered. The interior is not large nor imposing, after one has seen the temples of Egypt.

The exterior, however, is on such a colossal scale, that, notwithstanding the want of proportion in the different statues, the effect is very striking. The largest ones are about thirtyfive feet high, and not identical, as are those of the great temple. One, who stands with one leg advanced, while he holds a sword with the handle pressed against his breast, is executed with much more spirit than is usually met with in statues of this period. The sculptures of the interior are interesting, and being of the time of Remeses the Great, whose history they illustrate, are executed with much skill and labor. The head of the goddess Athor, on the face of the columns in the hall, is much less beautiful than that of the same goddess at Dendera. It is, in fact, almost broad and distorted enough to represent the genius Typhon.

The front of the great temple is not parallel to that of the other, nor does it face the river, which here flows in a northeast course. The line of the cliff is broken between the two, so that the figures of the great Remeses, seated on each side of the door, look to the east, the direction of the line of the face being nearly north. Through the gap in front, the sands have poured down from the Desert behind, almost wholly filling up the space between the two cliffs ; and though since the temple was first opened, in 1817, it has been cleared nearly to the base more than once, the rapid accumulation of sand has again almost closed the entrance. The southern colossus ia 21*