a flower. The enormous stones, which rest upon and stretch from column to column, 
are among the wonders of Egyptian structure. On the front and back, and on the 
soffit of these masses, the winged globe and asps shed their influence over those who 
pass, and everywhere appear to guard or to warn the visitor. 
Perhaps no point in this vast edifice is made more striking by contrast, than the 
grand propylon, with a few mud huts which rest against it on the cornices of the 
colonnade that surrounds the court; they have scarcely more importance in the scene 
than swallows’ nests under the gable of a modern dwelling. 
A COLOSSAL STATUE AT THE ENTRANCE TO THE 
TEMPLE OF LUXOR. 
This mutilated figure is one of the two sitting statues which were placed before the 
grand propylon of the Temple of Luxor, one on either side of the entrance; they are 
of granite, and, though seated, they must have been nearly fifty feet in height. As 
fragments of another have been found, it has been conjectured that there were originally 
four statues. The celebrated obelisks of Luxor were placed in advance of those which 
remain. These figures represent Remeses. II., by whom the propylon, and the great 
court between it and the Temple of Amunoph III., the statues and the obelisks, were 
added. The faces have been entirely disfigured by violence, or we should probably 
have found in these statues some of the finest examples of Egyptian sculpture, for 
they were of that period which was the most distinguished for art in Egypt. They 
bear on their heads the double caps, the mitre surmounting the corn-measure, as evidence 
of his sovereignty in Upper and Lower Egypt. 
The bases of the seats or thrones probably touched the walls of the propylon, 
but the sloping surface of the latter leaves, at the present height of the ground around 
the middle of the figure, a clear space behind, which can be seen in the view of the 
obelisk of Luxor. When the French removed the obelisk to Paris, they cleared away 
the huts or dwellings which the modern inhabitants had built about this statue, and 
removed many feet of soil; yet it would require a clearing of twenty or thirty feet 
to reach the original causeway, or pavement, and entirely expose, in all its height, 
this magnificent propylon, these statues, and, alas! its now solitary obelisk. 
