A few scattered ruins only of the temple remain, but these two battered giants sit there still and keep their watch upon the desert plain. These were the statues called by Greek fancy the ‘statues of Memnon,’ who was, they said, the son of Aurora, and came to the aid of the Greeks at the siege of Troy. One of them was broken in two during a terrible earthquake that wrought great destruction in Egypt in A.D. 27. The upper part fell to the ground, and it was after this event that the statue became vocal, and emitted every morning at sunrise a musical and melancholy strain. The fact of such a sound being heard was attested by an immense number of inscriptions left there by both Greek and Roman travellers. Septimius Severus afterwards repaired the statue, and from that time the phenomenon ceased, but has ever since been subject of curious speculation. As might be supposed from the extent and splendour of his works, the reign of Amenhotep III. was not of short duration. We read of one thirty years’ jubilee that was celebrated amid national rejoicings. Some of the taxpayers brought, it is said, on that occasion ‘when the overseer had spoken but one word, more than the actual amount due, and the king rewarded their devotion by the presentation of golden chains and collars—the customary badges of honour.’ The portraits of Egyptian kings and queens bear every sign of being truthful and characteristic likenesses. The kings of the Thothmes family are all fine-looking men, their noses straight, their features well formed; those of the second and third Thothmes being particularly refined and delicately cut. And Queen Tai-ti, wife of Amenhotep III., is unquestionably the most beautiful amongst the Egyptian queens that we know. But the monarch who reigned next, or next but one to the last-named sovereign, is of quite peculiar ugliness; he has a retreating forehead, a very long aquiline nose, and an extraordinary chin, long and pointed. His figure is thin and effeminate, his legs feeble and attenuated, and his expression somewhat idiotic. It is difficult to believe that he could have belonged to the same family, or even the same nation as the Thothmes and Amenhoteps, his predecessors, and one is inclined to conclude with Mr. Villiers Stuart,[42] that a princess must have unexpectedly succeeded to the throne whose husband was a foreigner. This idea would agree with the fact that the new sovereign actually introduced a new form of worship into the country.