406 Some Account of the Monuments 
colossi anywhere else than within or in frevt of the buildings. 
As to the ‘sphinxes which formed alley Sy it was certainly Yak 
wise. But what confirms our opinion is, that Strabo and Pliny 
place the colossus of Memnon in an edifice which the former 
calls the Memnonium, and which the other calls the Serapeum, 
Nevertheless, it the enormous dimensions which a building must 
have had adorned by such colossi, excite astonishment, it ap- 
pears no less extraordinary that such slight remains of it are to 
be found. This new doubt will vanish of itself, if we syppose 
that the building was of limestone; and nothing contradicts this 
opinion, for in fact the materiais of those buildings have since 
been used for lime.» Their number must have been consider- 
able; the immense excavations in the calcareous rocks prove 
this. There likewise remains near this colossus the remains of 
an ancient building constructed of this stone. 
It is also more to the northward that the building is to be 
found which modern ay ellers, and particularly Norden, a 
nerally call Memnoninm™*, but which must be designated the 
Palace and Tomb of Osymandyas. The ruins of this building 
are among the most picturesque of those of ancient Thebes. 
This palace was built of tree-stone. The pylones, many of the 
columns and caryatid pillars of this building, are still standing, 
while the ruins of so many others are heaped up around in hil- 
locks. Here also we enter by a superb gateway into a square 
court, which is upwards of 140 feet long by 161 broad. It is 
in ruins, with the exception of two columns soll standing, 
_and so encumbered with biocks of granite as to resemble a quarry 
more than a court, By and by we discover the ruins of a 
formidable colossus. destroyed with violence, but of which the 
head with a foot and a hand still remain. The fore finger is 
nearly four feet long, the distance from one shoulder to the 
other in a straight line is twenty-one feet. The peight of the 
whole could not have been less thau forty-five feet. The pedestal, 
eighteen feet high, is still standing opposite the ston gateway. 
The pedestal, like the colossus itself, is of the finest red granite. 
It is near this city also that we still find the spet from which 
this mass of two millions of pounds has been detached, in erder 
to be conveyed to the place which it afterwards occupied, forty- 
* Tn order to ayoid all confusion in the topoxraphy of Thebes, it must 
te observed that Norden and other travellers call Memnoviuin or Palace 
of Memnon, that which with more reason ought to be ca'led the Palace of 
Osymandyas. Pococke falls into another error, in taking for the Mem- 
nonium the Palace of Medynat-Abou. Sir W. Hamilton is also of his 
opinion. Nevertheless i it is between these two buildings that the building 
in ruins is to be found, to which the statue of Memnon belonged, and to 
which Strabo has given the name of Memnoniwn. 
five 
