contrary,
the drawing is so full of energy that it carries the imagination hack to
the time and scene of those far-off battles.

[Illustration: 230.jpg RAMSES II. STRIKES A GROUP OF PRISONERS]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Insinger.

The indistinct light in which it is seen helps the illusion, and we
almost forget that it is a picture we are beholding, and not the action
itself as it took place some three thousand years ago. A small speos,
situated at some hundred feet further north, is decorated with standing
colossi of smaller size, four of which represent Ramses, and two of them
his wife, Isit Nofritari. This speos possesses neither peristyle
nor crypt, and the chapels are placed at the two extremities of the
transverse passage, instead of being in a parallel line with the
sanctuary; on the other hand, the hypostyle hall rests on six pillars
with Hathor-headed capitals of fine proportions.

[Illustration: 231.jpg THE FACADE OF THE LITTLE SPEOS OF HAUTHOR AT ABU
SIMBEL]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the plates in Champollion.

A third excavated grotto of modest dimensions served as an accessory
chamber to the two others. An inexhaustible stream of yellow sand
poured over the great temple from the summit of the cliff, and partially
covered it every year. No sooner were the efforts to remove it relaxed,
than it spreads into the chambers, concealing the feet of the colossi,
and slowly creeping upwards to their knees, breasts, and necks; at the
beginning of this century they were entirely hidden. In spite of all
that was done to divert it, it ceaselessly reappeared, and in a few
summers regained all the ground which had been previously cleared.
It would seem as if the desert, powerless to destroy the work of the
conqueror, was seeking nevertheless to hide it from the admiration of
posterity.*

* The English engineers have succeeded in barring out the
sand, and have prevented it from pouring over the cliff any
more.--Ed.

Seti had worked indefatigably at Thebes, but the shortness of his reign
prevented him from completing the buildings he had begun there. There
existed everywhere, at Luxor, at Karnak, and on the left bank of the
Nile, the remains of his unfinished works; sanctuaries partially roofed
in, porticoes incomplete, columns raised to merely half their height,
halls as yet imperfect with blank walls, here and there covered with
only the outlines in red and black ink of