[Illustration: 228.jpg THE FACE OF THE ROCK AT ABU SIMGEL]
His knees give way beneath him, his head falls heavily backwards, and the features are contracted in his death-agony. Pharaoh with his left hand has seized him by the arm, while with his right he points his lance against his enemys breast, and is about to pierce him through the heart. As a rule, this type of bas-relief is executed with a conventional grace which leaves the spectator unmoved, and free to consider the scene merely from its historical point of view, forgetful of the artist.
[Illustration: 229.jpg RAMSES II. PIERCES a Libyan chief with his lance]
Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Mons. do Bock.
An examination of most of the other wall-decorations of the speos will furnish several examples of this type: we see Ramses with a suitable gesture brandishing his weapon above a group of prisoners, and the composition furnishes us with a fair example of official sculpture, correct, conventional, but devoid of interest. Here, on the contrary, the drawing is so full of energy that it carries the imagination hack to the time and scene of those far-off battles.
[Illustration: 230.jpg RAMSES II. STRIKES A GROUP OF PRISONERS]
Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Insinger.
The indistinct light in which it is seen helps the illusion, and we almost forget that it is a picture we are beholding, and not the action itself as it took place some three thousand years ago. A small speos, situated at some hundred feet further north, is decorated with standing colossi of smaller size, four of which represent Ramses, and two of them his wife, Isit Nofrîtari. This speos possesses neither peristyle nor crypt, and the chapels are placed at the two extremities of the transverse passage, instead of being in a parallel line with the sanctuary; on the other hand, the hypostyle hall rests on six pillars with Hathor-headed capitals of fine proportions.
[Illustration: 231.jpg THE FAÇADE OF THE LITTLE SPEOS OF HAUTHOR AT ABU SIMBEL]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the plates in Champollion.
A third excavated grotto of modest dimensions served as an accessory chamber to the two others. An inexhaustible stream of yellow sand poured over the great temple from the summit of the cliff, and partially covered it every year. No sooner were the efforts to remove it relaxed, than it spreads into the chambers, concealing the feet of the colossi, and slowly creeping upwards to their knees, breasts, and necks; at the beginning of this century they were entirely hidden. In spite of all that was done to divert it, it ceaselessly reappeared, and in a few summers regained all the ground which had been previously cleared. It would seem as if the desert, powerless to destroy the work of the conqueror, was seeking nevertheless to hide it from the admiration of posterity.
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