A COLOSSAL STATUE AT THE ENTRANCE TO THE TEMPLE OF LUXOR.

 

THIS mutilated figure is one of the two sitting statues which were placed before the grand propylon of the Temple of Luxor, one on either side of the entrance; they are of granite, and, though seated, they must have been nearly fifty feet in height. As fragments of another have been found, it has been conjectured that there were originally four statues. The celebrated obelisks of Luxor were placed in advance of those which remain. These figures represented Remeses II., by whom the propylon, and the great court, between it and the Temple of Amunoph III., the statues, and the  obelisks, were added. The faces have been entirely disfigured by violence, or we should probably have found in these statues some of the finest examples of Egyptian sculpture, for they were of that period which was the most distinguished for art in Egypt.  They bear on their heads the double caps, the mitre surmounting the corn-measure, as evidence of his sovereignty over Upper and Lower Egypt.

    The bases of the seats or thrones probably touched the walls of the propylon, but the sloping surface of the latter leaves, at the present height of the ground around the middle of the figure, a clear space behind, which can be seen in the view of the obelisk of Luxor. When the French removed the obelisk to Paris, they cleared away the huts or dwellings which the modern inhabitants had built about this statue, and removed many feet of soil; yet it would require a clearing of twenty or thirty feet to reach the original causeway, or pavement, and entirely expose, in all its height, this magnificent propylon, these statues, and alas! its now solitary obelisk.