The Memnons were monolith statues of imposing size, symbolic of the rising sun--of Horus or Osiris. Homer mentions Memnon, for his remarkable beauty, as the son of the east. Diodorus speaks of him as Tithonus, a general, sent out to aid Priamus of Troy against the besieging Greeks. The walls of temples, palaces, tombs, and catacombs were partly decorated with reliefs _en creux_, and partly with tapestry-like patterns, using geometrical figures, sometimes, though rarely, intermixed with plants, or plants treated with conventional stiffness. The walls with the Egyptians had a different purpose than merely to encircle or to enclose; they served as huge blackboards of stone, on which the priests wrote their mystic records. The superfluous thickness of the walls suggests that they were once made of brick, like those of Nineveh or Babylon, and, further, the overlaying of these immense granite blocks with stucco, serves to bear out this supposition. The walls of the enclosures of temples and the sarcophagi were covered with hieroglyphs or scenes from life, both on the inside and outside; tombs and catacombs were decorated on the inside only. These scenes are framed in with borders, reminding us of the broad seams in woven stuffs. In temples the scenes refer to burial rituals, or the judgment of the dead; in palaces to hunts and conquests of the kings. We see the Asian and African conquests of Ramses II. represented on the walls of Ipsambul (Aboosimbal in Nubia) in bright-coloured pictures. The king brandishes a pole-axe over the heads of Negroes, Hebrews, and Aryans, that is, over one mixed and two pure groups of mankind. Above his head runs the hieroglyphic scroll: ‘The beneficent living God, guardian of glory, smites the South; puts to flight the East; rules by victory, and drags to his country all the earth, and all foreign lands.’ High officials and private persons ornamented the walls of their houses and tombs with scenes of every-day occurrences. We may study in these their whole domestic and public life, their customs and manners, their amusements and toils. The ceilings of the chambers are not covered with _symbolic_ pictures, but generally with patterns of conventional wall-decorations. In temples they are sometimes decorated with zodiacs, as at Denderah--the best-preserved Egyptian temple, of which, however, the date is doubtful. C. The _hieratic style_ of the Pharaohs substituted a greater amount of very tasteful symbolic ornamentation. The Hathor-masks, the names of kings in cartouches, the viper as a symbol of divine or royal power; serpents, scarabæi, winged globes, either symbolic of the sun, the moon, or the earth, formed the principal elements of the innumerable variety of severe ornamentation. In addition to these the following were used:-- 1. The papyrus, as the symbol of bodily and intellectual food. 2. The lotus, as a symbol of the creative mysteries of the universe.