"We went through some of the small temples, and then came to the Rameseum, or Memnonium. It owes its first name to the fact that it was founded by Rameses the Great, and its second to its dedication to the worship of Memnon. It is grand enough to have half a dozen names instead of two, and the honor can certainly be divided between Rameses and Memnon without any fear that either of them will suffer. [Illustration: GRAND HALL OF THE MEMNONIUM.] "It was in the usual form of the Egyptian temples, and its grand court was not far from fifty yards square. Many of the columns have disappeared, or lie in ruins, but enough of them remain to show the magnificence of the original structure. "The great object of curiosity here is the statue of Rameses the Great, which stood in the court-yard, and is now overturned and broken. There are some mysteries about it, and we will try to name them. "In the first place, no one can guess how the Egyptians managed to take such a huge block of granite from the quarries and convert it into a statue. It was a single piece of stone, and represented the King sitting on his throne (the usual position of Egyptian statues) with his hands resting on his knees, and his face in that calm repose that a great ruler ought to exhibit when he has everything his own way. And how large do you suppose it was? [Illustration: VIEW IN THE MEMNONIUM, WITH RUINED STATUE OF RAMESES THE GREAT.] "We used a tape-line to be sure we were right in our estimates, and found that the figure was twenty feet across the shoulders and fifteen feet from shoulder to elbow. The foot was eleven feet from toe to heel, and the other parts of the statue were in proportion. The throne and legs are a good deal broken up, but the upper part of the statue down to the waist is in comparatively good condition. Engineers have calculated that the whole statue, when perfect, weighed nearly nine hundred tons, or nearly three times as much as the largest obelisk at Karnak. Commander Gorringe says that the obelisk he transported from Egypt to America, and set up in Central Park, New York, weighs two hundred and twenty-four tons, so you see what a big thing was this statue of Rameses, which the Egyptians brought down the river from Assouan and set up in Thebes thousands of years ago. "When the Persians conquered Egypt, and destroyed many of its cities, they overturned the statue of Rameses the Great, and proceeded to break it up; and another of the mysteries is how they managed to break it, as gunpowder was not then invented, and there is nothing to show that they possessed any powerful explosives. But break it they did; and it is only because it was so large, or they were called away on other business, that they left any part of it for us to open our eyes about.