“A hundred and seven inscriptions,” Diana replied absently, joining him to stare at the rectangular base.
“How do you know that?”he asked in surprise, his gaze immediately going to some inscriptions on the front of the statue’s leg.Some carvings even continued down onto the foot.
“Jean-Antoine Letronne wrote about them in his book,La statue vocale de Memnon considérée dans ses rapports avec l'Égypte et la Grèce,”she replied.“Father acquired a copy when I was twelve.”
Randy didn’t bother asking if she had read it.She probably had it memorized.
“Will it sing for us?”Stella asked.She wasn’t far from them but had opted not to wade through the water.Standing on his own two feet, Bradley was clinging to her skirts.
“I don’t think it does that anymore,” Harry replied.“The Romans rebuilt the upper part of the one on the right after the top broke during an earthquake.”
“Oh, so that’s why his face is in such poor condition,” she remarked.“The other seems in better shape.”
When the breeze picked up, Bradley began coo’ing.“Seems we have our own singing monument,” Helen remarked, grinning for the first time since they had boarded the felucca that morning.
Barbara tittered at the boy, but her gaze was on the two statues that stood in front of them.“They are certainly colossal,” she said.“What are they made of?”
“Quartzite sandstone,” Mahmood replied.“Back when it could sing—one of the cracks in the sandstone was the source of the sound—the Greeks said it was calling to his mother, Aurora, the goddess of the morning sun.”
“Why are they so far apart?”Will asked.
“Amenhotep the Third’s temple was here.From what was written by the Romans who came here, it is said the temple was larger than even Karnak,” Mahmood claimed.“These statues of him flanked the entrance to the first pylon.”
Will furrowed his brows.Although a few trees and some uneven ground could be seen above a shallow lake behind the statues, the expanse of otherwise flat ground showed no evidence of ruins.“What happened to it?”
“This is a floodplain,” Mahmood said with a shrug.“The foundations were probably made of mud brick.After a few earthquakes, it is not surprising the temple would have collapsed and its remaining blocks carted off to be used for other temples,” he explained.
“Such a shame,” Barbara murmured, tittering when she realized a cow was grazing near the water’s edge behind the statues.“I didn’t know you had cattle here,” she remarked.
Mahmood’s brows furrowed before he spotted what had her making the comment.“That, my lady, is a water buffalo.But we also have cows.”
“Oh,” she murmured.
Will offered his arm and they moved closer to the other statue at the same time Diana and Randy were making their way to it.“She is obviously thrilled to be here,” he commented.
“I rather imagine she would be more thrilled to actually discover something new.Or old, rather,” Barbara replied.
“Thank you for not balking when I told you we would be continuing our trip south,” he said.
She reacted with surprise.“Why would I balk?”she asked.“This has been very diverting and far more interesting than Oxfordshire,” she added.“And I haven’t been having to run a household.”
He chuckled.“I promise we’ll still go to Rome on the way back.”
“I am looking forward to it,” she replied.
When the rest of the party had seen enough, they returned to the hantours for the trip to the Temple of Ramesses III.
“What do you know of this temple?”Randy asked Diana when the driver of their hantour halted the horse in front of the temple.
“Vivant Denon was the first to describe it in recent times,” Diana replied.“That was at the turn of the century, when Napoleon’s savants were here.Then there was a Franco-Tuscan Expedition about twelve or thirteen years ago.Jean-François Champollion was part of that.”
After the other hantours had joined theirs and everyone had assembled, Mahmood led the way to the first pylon.“These ruins you see around you are from a Coptic settlement that may have been home to over eighteen-thousand inhabitants,” he explained.“Houses, narrow streets, and the remains of religious buildings can all be found here.”He turned and faced the pylon.“By now, this must appear familiar to you.However, wait until you are inside.”
Like the pylon at the Khonsu temple, the tops of four niches, two on each side, could be seen above the sand that had collected over time.The opening was clear, though, and they made their way into the forecourt.All the visible walls were carved with hieroglyphics, many the same as what they had seen in other temples.Some were done in relief while others were etched.The most arresting differences were the colossal statues of Ramesses III on one side and uncarved columns on the other.
“Again, you will see familiar scenes, as if whole sections of other temples were copied onto the wall of this one,” Mahmood said, waving them past the second pylon and into a peristyle hall.Although there was a carpet of sand covering the floor, it wasn’t as deep as in the other temples they had toured, so more of the walls were visible.So were the columns, these in the shape of the pharaoh.
“This place is massive,” Randy remarked, gazing up to discover that the painted symbols on the ceiling and at the top of the columns still retained their brilliant colors.
