support of a tabular frame, or steia, that contains the ovals and characters which 
probably record the erection of these colossi. A line of hieroglyphics also extends 
from the shoulder down the back to the pedestal, and here is found the name of the 
Pharaoh whom the statue represented, Amunoph III. On either side stand, attached 
to the throne, statues of the wife and the mother of the Pharaoh, eighteen feet high, 
and there are traces of a smaller statue of his queen between his feet. 
The figures seen climbing up the throne of the vocal Memnon are Messrs. Hurnard 
and Corry, who were at that time Mr. Roberts’s travelling companions. 
Wilkinson’s Egypt and Thebes. Wathen’s Arts and Antiquities of Egypt. 
THE SANCTUARY OF THE GREAT TEMPLE OF 
ABOO-SIMBEL, NUBIA. 
The adytum of the Temple, which terminates the great excavation at Aboo-Simbel, 
and is seen only in the gloom of its profundity in the larger drawing of the Interior, 
is a chamber which measures, from the door of the sanctuary to the wall behind the 
figures, twelve feet three inches, and in width twenty-three feet seven inches. In 
this cella are four sitting statues; three of them the Theban triad of deities, the 
fourth is Remeses, who is here admitted to a seat among them. 
Roberts says that the statues in the sanctuary have been painted of various colours: 
before them is an altar cut like the figures themselves, out of the solid rock; it is 
squared on the sides, and formed like a truncated pyramid, the top of it is broken. 
On the sides of the w r all, about two feet in advance of the altar, are the marks of 
grooves, with holes for fastenings for a screen, probably of open-work and metal, 
to prevent too near an approach of the worshippers, if they were ever allowed to 
proceed so far. The sandstone is soft in which these statues are hewn. The statue 
on the left has an ornament reaching from his chin down nearly to his feet; the 
second has a head-dress like the tutulus, or palm-branch; the third wears a sort of 
helmet; and the last is the hawk-headed deity. This is said to be the oldest of 
Nubian or the Egyptian Temples: if the arts were thus advanced at so remote a 
period as the construction of this temple, what has become of those that preceded 
it? for such excellence could only have sprung from progressive improvement. 
Wilkinson’s Egypt and Thebes. 
Roberts’s Journal. 
