Stupendous as they are, nothing is more difficult than to see the colossi properly. Standing between the rock and the river one is too near; stationed on the island opposite one is too far off; while from the sand-slope only a side view is obtainable. Hence, for want of a fitting standpoint, many travelers have seen nothing but deformity in the most perfect face handed down to us by Egyptian art. One recognizes in it the negro and one the Mongolian type;[108] while another admires the fidelity with which “the Nubian characteristics” have been seized. Yet, in truth, the head of the young Augustus is not cast in a loftier mold. These statues are portraits--portraits of the same man four times repeated; and that man is Rameses the Great. Now, Rameses, the Great if he was as much like his portraits as his portraits are like each other, must have been one of the handsomest men, not only of his own day, but of all history. Wheresoever we meet with him, whether in the fallen colossus at Memphis or in the syenite torso of the British Museum, or among the innumerable bas-reliefs of Thebes, Abydos, Gournah, and Bayt-el-Welly, his features (though bearing in some instances the impress of youth and in others of maturity) are always the same. The face is oval; the eyes are long, prominent, and heavy-lidded; the nose is slightly aquiline and characteristically depressed at the tip; the nostrils are open and sensitive; the under lip projects; the chin is short and square. Here, for instance, is an outline from a bas-relief at Bayt-el-Welly. The subject is commemorative of the king’s first campaign. A beardless youth, fired with the rage of battle, he clutches a captive by the hair and lifts his mace to slay. In this delicate and Dantesque face, which lacks as yet the fullness and repose of the later portraits, we recognize all the distinctive traits of the older Rameses. [Illustration] Here, again, is a sketch from Abydos in which the king, although he has not yet ceased to wear the side-lock of youth, is seen with a boyish beard, and looks four years older than in the previous portrait. [Illustration]