It has already been said that the last Rameses to the southward is the best preserved. His left arm and hand are injured, and the head of the uræus sculptured on the front of the pschent is gone; but with these exceptions the figure is as whole, as fresh in surface, as sharp in detail, as on the day it was completed. The next is shattered to the waist. His head lies at his feet, half-buried in sand. The third is nearly as perfect as the first; while the fourth has lost not only the whole beard and the greater part of the uræus, but has both arms broken away and a big, cavernous hole in the front of the body. From the double-crowns of the two last the top ornament is also missing. It looks a mere knob; but it measures eight feet in height. Such an effect does the size of these four figures produce on the mind of the spectator that he scarcely observes the fractures they have sustained. I do not remember to have even missed the head and body of the shattered one, although nothing is left of it above the knees. Those huge legs and feet, covered with ancient inscriptions,[110] some of Greek, some of Phœnician origin, tower so high above the heads of those who look at them from below that one scarcely thinks of looking higher still. The figures are naked to the waist and clothed in the usual striped tunic. On their heads they wear the double-crown, and on their necks rich collars of cabochon drops cut in very low relief. The feet are bare of sandals and the arms of bracelets; but in the front of the body, just where the customary belt and buckle would come, are deep holes in the stone, such as might have been made to receive rivets, supposing the belts to have been made of bronze or gold. On the breast, just below the necklace, and on the upper part of each arm, are cut in magnificent ovals, between four and five feet in length, the ordinary cartouches of the king. These were probably tattooed upon his person in the flesh. Some have supposed that these statues were originally colored, and that the color may have been effaced by the ceaseless shifting and blowing of the sand. Yet the drift was probably at its highest when Burckhardt discovered the place in 1813; and on the two heads that were still above the surface he seems to have observed no traces of color. Neither can the keenest eye detect any vestige of that delicate film of stucco with which the Egyptians invariably prepared their surfaces for painting. Perhaps the architects were for once content with the natural color of the sandstone, which is here very rich and varied. It happens, also, that the colossi come in a light-colored vein of the rock, and so sit relieved against a darker background. Toward noon, when the level of the façade has just passed into shade and the sunlight still strikes upon the statues, the effect is quite startling. The whole thing, which is then best seen from the island, looks like a huge onyx-cameo cut in high relief.