We may safely say that if the temples proper, such as those of Karnak and Luxor, had contained master-statues corresponding in any way to those of the Greeks, they would have been of colossal size. But although the soil of Thebes is almost paved with the fragments of royal colossi, not a single vestige of any gigantic statue of Amen has ever been discovered. All that we know of those few divine statues to which special veneration was paid excludes any idea of size exceeding that of man. The statues of Amen and Khons, at Thebes and Napata, which nodded their approval when consulted by the king as to his future plans, were certainly not colossi.[267] And as for the figure of Khons, which took a voyage into Syria to cure the sister-in-law of one of the latter Ramessids, we can hardly believe it was more than a statuette.[268] [267] MASPERO, _Annuaire de l'Association des Études Grecques_, 1877, p. 132. [268] See the often-quoted story of a voyage taken by a statue of Khons to the country of Bakhtan and its return to Egypt. DE ROUGÉ, _Étude sur un Stèle Égyptienne appartenant à la Bibliothèque Nationale_, 8vo, 1856. In spite of their number the statues of the gods must have attracted much less attention than those of the kings. The Pharaoh who built a temple filled it with his own effigies; his colossi sat before the gate, they helped to form those structural units which we call Osiride piers, and figures of smaller size were ranged under the porticos. In that part of the Great Temple at Karnak which dates from the eighteenth dynasty, statues of Thothmes III. alone have been found to the number of several dozens; their broken fragments may be identified in every corner.[269] [269] MARIETTE, _Karnak_, p. 36. See also his _Abydos, Catalogue Général_, § 2, p. 27. Among the countless votive offerings with which a great building like that at Karnak was filled, there were a few statues of private individuals. "The right to erect statues in the temples belonged (as we should say) to the crown. We find therefore that most of the private statues found in the sacred inclosures are inscribed with a special formula: 'Granted, by the king's favour, to so and so, the son of so and so....' Permission to place a statue in a temple was only given as a reward for services rendered. The temple might be either that of the favoured individual's native town, or one for which he had peculiar veneration.... Civil and foreign wars, the decay of cities, and the destruction of idols by the Christians, have combined to render statues of private persons from public temples of very rare occurrence in our collections."[270] [270] MASPERO, in the _Monuments de l'Art Antique_ of Rayet. The tombs were the proper places for private statues; we have seen that at Memphis they were set up in the courtyards and hidden in the serdabs, that at Thebes they were placed, either upright or sitting, in the depths of the hypogea.[271]