yet remain. The upper part of the second figure has fallen, but the faces of these 
colossi exhibit a beauty of expression the more striking as it is unlooked for in statues 
of such dimensions. 
Roberts, in his Journal, complains indignantly of the way in which “Cockney tourists 
and Yankee travellers” have knocked off a toe or a finger of these magnificent statues. 
“ The hand,” he says, “ of the finest of them has been destroyed (not an easy matter, 
since Wilkinson says the forefinger is three feet long) by these contemptible relic-hunters, 
who have also been led by their vanity to smear their vulgar names on the very 
foreheads of the Egyptian deities!” 
Burckhardt’s Travels in Nubia. Belzoni’s Travels. Irby and Mangles’ Travels. 
Wilkinson’s Egypt and Thebes. Roberts’s Journal. 
EXCAVATED TEMPLE OF GYRSHE, NUBIA. 
This Temple is at Gerf-Hossayn (the ancient Tutzis), near to Gyrshe; it is of the 
time of Remeses the Great, and except the portico, entirely excavated in the rock. 
Within, it consists of a large hall, succeeded by a transverse corridor, with a small 
chamber on each side; in the adytum are several sitting figures in high relief, with 
an altar before them, as at Aboo-Simbel. The area, or portico, had a row of Osiride 
pillars on either side and four columns in front; but of it little now remains. The 
total depth of the excavated part does not exceed one hundred and thirty feet. The 
interior bears some resemblance to that of Aboo-Simbel, but was far less skilfully 
wrought and unworthy of the time of Remeses. 
The ascent to the Temple is described by Mr. Roberts as having originally been 
by a flight of steps, on either side of which he conjectures that sphinxes were arranged, 
of which fragments are scattered around, together with large wrought stones and broken 
pottery, remnants of an ancient town within the excavation, and hewn from the rock, 
are six colossal figures, about eighteen feet high, with the corn-measure cap, and in 
their hands, crossed on their breasts, the crook and the scourge. Three are on each 
side, and they seem to guard the approach to the adytum, - or sanctuary. The im¬ 
perfections of the rock appear to have been filled up with masonry, or stucco, and 
coloured: it is everywhere covered with symbolical figures and hieroglyphics; but the 
whole is much defaced and blackened by the Arabs, who light fires within it when 
they shelter there with their cattle. Mr. Roberts says, that when those who followed him 
came in with torches, they disturbed myriads of bats which had hung in festoons 
around them. 
Wilkinson’s Egypt and Thebes. 
Roberts’s Journal. 
