It was about twenty feet square, and painted throughout most elaborately. One gorgeous 
passage makes way into another more gorgeous still, until you arrive at a steep descent. 
At the base of this a doorway opens into a vaulted hall of noble proportions, whose 
gloom considerably increases its apparent size. Hei'e the body of Osirei, father of 
Remeses II., was laid about three thousand two hundred years ago, in the beautiful 
alabaster sarcophagus which Belzoni drew from hence as a reward of his enterprise. 
Its poor occupant, who had taken such pains to hide himself, was ‘undone,’ for the 
amusement of a London conversazione.” 
Belzom’s Travels. Wilkinson’s Egypt. The Crescent and the Cross. 
THE TEMPLES OF ABOO-SIMBEL, FROM THE NILE. 
The smallest of these Temples, and the nearest to the Nile, was dedicated to Isis, 
and is excavated about ninety feet into the rock. It was, during many ages, the only 
one known there; for the accumulations of sand had so concealed the Great Temple 
of Osiris that it remained undiscovered till Burckhardt visited Nubia, in 1813. In his 
“Travels” he says:—“When we reached the top of the mountain, I left my guide 
with the camels, and descended an almost perpendicular cleft, choked with sand, to 
view the Temple of Ebsambol, of which I had heard many magnificent descriptions. 
There is no road to this Temple, which stands just over the river, and is entirely cut 
out of the rocky side of the mountain; it is in complete preservation. In front of 
the entrance are six colossal figures, that measure from the ground to the knee six feet 
and a half.” After describing the interior, he adds,—“ Having, as I supposed, seen 
all the antiquities of Ebsambol, I was about to ascend the sandy side of the mountain 
by the same way as I had descended, when, having luckily turned more to the 
southward, I fell in with what is still visible of four immense colossal statues, cut out 
of the rock, at a distance of about two hundred yards from the Temple: they are 
now almost entirely buried beneath the sands. The entire head and part of the breast 
and arms of one of the statues are yet above the surface; the head of the next is 
broken off, and the bonnets of the other two only appear. It is difficult to determine 
whether these statues are in a sitting or a standing posture.” After describing the 
beauty of the head, he states,—“ On the wall of the rock, in the centre of the four 
statues, is a figure of the hawk-headed Osiris surmounted by a globe; beneath which, 
I suspect, could the sand be cleared away, a vast Temple would be discovered.” On 
his return to Cairo he informed Belzoni of what he had seen at Aboo-Simbel; and 
this indefatigable traveller removed enough of the sand to effect an entrance, and 
disclosed one of the most perfect and extraordinary works of the ancient Egyptians. 
