These tremendous warders sit sixty-six feet high, without the platform under their feet. They measure across the chest twenty-five feet and four inches; from the shoulder to the elbow fifteen feet and six inches; from the inner side of the elbow joint to the tip of the middle finger, fifteen feet; and so on, in relative proportion. If they stood up, they would tower to a height of at least eighty-three feet, from the soles of their feet to the tops of their enormous double-crowns. Nothing in Egyptian sculpture is perhaps quite so wonderful as the way in which these Abou Simbel artists dealt with the thousands of tons of material to which they here gave human form. Consummate masters of effect, they knew precisely what to do and what to leave undone. These were portrait statues; therefore they finished the heads up to the highest point consistent with their size. But the trunk and the lower limbs they regarded from a decorative rather than a statuesque point of view. As decoration, it was necessary that they should give size and dignity to the façade. Everything, consequently, was here subordinated to the general effect of breadth, of massiveness, of repose. Considered thus, the colossi are a triumph of treatment. Side by side they sit, placid and majestic, their feet a little apart, their hands resting on their knees. Shapely though they are, those huge legs look scarcely inferior in girth to the great columns of Karnak. The articulations of the knee-joint, the swell of the calf, the outline of the _peroneus longus_ are indicated rather than developed. The toe-nails and toe-joints are given in the same bold and general way; but the fingers, because only the tips of them could be seen from below, are treated _en bloc_. The faces show the same largeness of style. The little dimple which gives such sweetness to the corners of the mouth, and the tiny depression in the lobe of the ear, are, in fact, circular cavities as large as saucers. How far this treatment is consistent with the most perfect delicacy and even finesse of execution may be gathered from the sketch. The nose there shown in profile is three feet and a half in length; the mouth, so delicately curved, is about the same in width; even the sensitive nostril, which looks ready to expand with the breath of life, exceeds eight inches in length. The ear (which is placed high and is well detached from the head) measures three feet and five inches from top to tip. A recent writer,[109] who brings sound practical knowledge to bear upon the subject, is of opinion that the Egyptian sculptors did not even “point” their work beforehand. If so, then the marvel is only so much the greater. The men who, working in so coarse and friable a material, could not only give beauty and finish to heads of this size, but could, with barbaric tools, hew them out _ab initio_, from the natural rock, were the Michael Angelos of their age.