If any such earlier civilisation existed in these lands, its records and its monuments have perished. No building is now found in Meroë whose date extends beyond the time of the great king Tirhakah, of the 25th Egyptian dynasty, B.C. 724 to 680, unless it be those bearing the name of one king, Amoum Gori, who was connected with the intruding race of sun-worshippers, which broke in upon the continuous succession of the kings of the 18th dynasty. Their monuments were all purposely destroyed by their successors; and almost the only records we have of them are the grottoes of Tel el Amarna, covered with their sculptures, which bear, it must be confessed, considerable resemblance in style to those found in Ethiopia. Even this indication is too slight to be of much value; and we must wait for some further confirmation before founding any reasoning upon it. The principal monuments of Tirhakah are two temples at Gibel Barkal, a singular isolated mount near the great southern bend of the river. One is a large first-class temple, of purely Egyptian form and design, about 500 ft. in length by 120 or 140 in width, consisting of two great courts, with their propylons, and with internal halls and sanctuaries arranged much like those of the Rameseum at Thebes (Woodcut No. 19), and so nearly also on the same scale as to make it probable that the one is a copy of the other. The other temple placed near this, but as usual unsymmetrically, consists of an outer hall, internally about 50 ft. by 60, the roof of which is supported by four ranges of columns, all with capitals representing figures of Typhon or busts of Isis. This leads to an inner cell or sanctuary, cut in the rock.[60] [Illustration: 46. Pyramids at Meroë. (From Hoskins’s ‘Travels in Ethiopia.’) FIG. 1.—Plan of Principal Group. Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. FIG. 2.—Section and Elevation of that marked A. Scale 50 ft. to 1 in. ] There are smaller remains strewed about, indicating the existence of a city on the spot, but nothing of architectural importance. The most remarkable monuments of the Ethiopian kingdom are the pyramids, of which three great groups have been discovered and described. The principal group is at a place called Dankelah, the assumed site of the ancient Meroë, in latitude 17° north. Another is at Gibel Barkal; the third at Nourri, a few miles lower down than the last named, but probably only another necropolis of the same city.