The throne and legs are reduced to small fragments, but the upper part, thrown 
back upon the ground, lies still in the position in which it probably fell. No wedge- 
marks or indications of slow destruction appear; and if such means had been used, 
it is probable that the destroyers would have begun at the top, in places of less 
resistance; but here the force of disruption was applied in the middle or lower part 
of the figure, and, though we were ignorant of the means, there is little doubt that 
an explosive force was used. The figure on the head and in the pedestal are the 
work of the Arabs, who cut out the pieces for millstones. Its destruction was, perhaps, 
coeval with the time of the Persians. 
No idea can be conveyed of its gigantic size, it probably exceeded, when entire, 
nearly three times the solid contents of the great obelisk at Ivarnak, and weighed 
nearly nine hundred tons. 
Bircli’s Historical Notices. Wilkinson’s Egypt and Thebes. 
FORTRESS OF IBRIM, NUBIA. 
This Vignette represents the fortress from a nearer point of view, and admirably 
exhibits the bold headland, which is crested with the ruins of walls, towers, and 
defences; but it contains few relics of antiquity, and those a mixture of Egyptian 
and Roman, of a late date and in bad style: a stone building, with a cornice and 
projecting slab intended for the globe and asps; and the capital of a Corinthian column 
of Roman date. A block used in building the outward wall bears the name of 
Tirliaka, an Ethiopian king, who ruled in his capital of Naputa, now El Berkel. In 
the rock below Ibrim are some small painted grottoes, bearing the names of Thothmes I. 
and III., and of Amunoph III., and of Retneses II., of the eighteenth dynasty, with 
statues in high relief at the upper end. 
Nothing can be imagined more lonely as an abode than this fortress — the Nile 
and the sun are the only things that appear to move there; and there is no water 
except what is obtained from the river. From its elevated situation the look-out 
is only over desolate mountains and an arid desert; sometimes, but rarely, a boat 
from Lower Egypt brings a traveller from a far distant country on his way to 
Wady Haifa, that he may be enabled to report on his return that he had visited 
both cataracts of the Nile. When the banks of the Nile were more thickly inhabited, 
and more frequent intercourse took place with Ethiopia and Abyssinia, Ibrim was 
a place of some importance: traces of habitations beyond the walls, and of an extensive 
necropolis, are evidence of a population more proportionate to its situation as a frontier 
fortress. 
