re to be found near Tyre, and on the banks of the
Nahr el-Kelb, where they mark the frontier to which his empire extended
in this direction. Others have but little resemblance to Egyptian
monuments, and were really the work of the Asiatic peoples among whom
they were found. The two figures referred to long ago by Herodotus,
which have been discovered near Ninfi between Sardis and Smyrna, are
instances of the latter.

[Illustration: 247.jpg STELE OF THE NAHR EL-KELB]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph.

The shoes of the figures are turned up at the toe, and the head-dress
has more resemblance to the high hats of the people of Asia Minor
than to the double crown of Egypt, while the lower garment is striped
horizontally in place of vertically. The inscription, moreover, is in an
Asiatic form of writing, and has nothing Egyptian about it. Ramses
II. in his youth was the handsomest man of his time. He was tall and
straight; his figure was well moulded--the shoulders broad, the arms
full and vigorous, the legs muscular; the face was oval, with a firm and
smiling mouth, a thin aquiline nose, and large open eyes.

[Illustration: 248.jpg THE BAS-BELIEF OF NINFI]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph.

[Illustration: 249.jpg THE COFFIN AND MUMMY OF RAMSES II]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph taken from the mummy
itself, by Emil Brugsch-Bey.

There may be seen below the cartouche the lines of the official report
of inspection written during the XXIst dynasty. Old age and death did
not succeed in marring the face sufficiently to disfigure it. The coffin
containing his body is not the same as that in which his children placed
him on the day of his obsequies; it is another substituted for it by one
of the Ramessides, and the mask upon it has but a distant resemblance
to the face of the victorious Pharaoh. The mummy is thin, much shrunken,
and light; the bones are brittle, and the muscles atrophied, as one
would expect in the case of a man who had attained the age of a hundred;
but the figure is still tall and of perfect proportions.*

* Even after the coalescence of the vertebrae and the shrinkage produced
by mummification, the body of Ramses II. still measures over 5 feet 8
inches.

The head, which is bald on the top, is somewhat long, and small in
relation to the bulk of the body; there is but little hair on the
forehead, but at the back of the head it is thick, and in smooth stiff