It is like the horizon of the sky when Ra rises in it.'* All this magnificence has long since passed away. But the great portrait-statues of the king, hewn out of single blocks of red breccia, and weighing not less than 700 tons apiece, still sit with hands on knees, gazing with stony stare over the ruins of so much splendour. They were the pride of the architect Amenhotep son of Hapu, and the greatest of his works. I undertook the works of his statues, great in width, and higher than his pylon; their beauties eclipsed the pylon; their length was forty cubits in the noble rock of quartzite. I built a great barge; I sailed it up the river, and I fixed the statues in his great temple firm like heaven.' The northernmost statue of the pair has become celebrated over the whole world owing to the disaster which almost destroyed it. Its upper part was thrown down by an earthquake in 27 B.C., and thereafter it emitted at sunrise a curious musical note. The Greeks identified the singing statue with Memnon, the son of Tithonus and Aurora, and tourists came from all parts of the Roman Empire to hear Memnon sing at sunrise. Like tourists, they have left their impressions of his performance scrawled all over the base of the great statue. The emperor Septimius Severus thought to do Memnon honour by repairing his statue, and built up the broken part with the blocks which still remain; but the effect was disastrous. Memnon was struck dumb, and has remained dumb ever since.

With such great buildings as these King Amenhotep sought to make Thebes a worthy capital of the great Empire over which he ruled. But his activities were not confined to Thebes. From the Delta on the north to Soleb, Sedeinga, and Napata on the south, his temples sprang up one after the other. That at Sedeinga was reared in honour of his beloved wife Tyi, while that at * Spiegelberg in Six Temples at Thebes,' p. 24.

Soleb is kept in memory by the two noble statues of couchant lions, now in the British Museum, which have been pronounced by Ruskin to be the finest examples of animal sculpture surviving from ancient times. At Elephantine he reared a small, but peculiarly interesting and beautiful temple, which in its form anticipated many of the best features of Grecian temple architecture. Unfortunately, this little gem of art, which still survived when Napoleon's expedition was in Egypt, has utterly perished, having been razed to its very foundation by one of the local governors, who in 1822 had occasion to seek stone for some of the buildings of Mehemet Ali, and could find none so handy as the material of one of the loveliest and most unique specimens of Egyptian architecture.

In such labours the last of the great emperors of Egypt's palmy days passed the thirty-six years of his peaceful reign. His more solid tasks were not undiversified by lighter undertakings. Thus we read of his excavation of the lake, already alluded to, on which he and his wife Tyi took their pleasure in a gorgeous water fête, sailing in their bark called The Beauties of Aten-a title which suggests the growing influence of the new religious cult which was to produce such remarkable results in the next reign. The king considered this festival of sufficient importance to be celebrated on a special scarab issued for the occasion. At other times he indulged, like his great ancestor, Tahutmes III., in the more dangerous joys of big-game hunting, and his hunting scarab tells of the slaying of 102 lions-no bad record for days of bow and spear.

Latterly it is possible that he may have felt the ground ringing somewhat hollow under his feet. The Syrian princes still addressed him in their letters with the most extravagant protests of humble service and faithfulness; but too often the news which they had to convey to him was ominous in the extreme. Already we have seen that

the Hittites had been appearing on the Mitannian frontier, and though repulsed by Dushratta, they returned again and again to the attack, and their steady and persistent pressure was beginning to tell. Had Amenhotep realized the significance of what his vassals told him, and advanced in person at the head of his army, the situation might yet have been saved. But apparently he did not grasp the fact that the whole northern part of his Empire was threatened. As one of the vassals of the Amarna letters wrote later to Amenhotep IV., ' Verily thy father did not march forth, nor inspect the lands of his vassal princes.' So, undisturbed by the one hand which could have restrained them, the Hittites pressed steadily in upon the frontiers of the Empire, cutting off vassal after vassal of the Egyptian king, in spite of the despairing letters which vainly called for help against the invaders. From Akizzi of Qatna, from Hadad-Nirari of Nukhashshi, from Ribaddi of Byblos, there comes always the same story of pressure from without, and lack of support from within. Under such circumstances one can scarcely wonder that some of the tributary princes fell away from their allegiance, and made terms with the power which was able to harm them, since Egypt was seemingly unable or unwilling to protect. Nor were the Hittites the only enemies who menaced the Egyptian supremacy. The wandering tribes of desert Semites, known as the Khabiri, or 'confederates,' were also threatening the frontiers of the Empire, and, indeed, had to some extent already established themselves on Egyptian territory.

But Amenhotep paid no heed to these omens. The magnificence around him may have blinded his eyes to the distant danger; or perhaps the lethargy of age was creeping over a life which had never been one of strenuous warlike ambitions, and the old king was content to implore his father Amen to grant peace in his time. At last the

end came. Not even the great goddess Ishtar of Nineveh, whose image the King of Mitanni sent down to Thebes that it might cure the dying king of his sickness, proved of any avail, and after a reign of thirty-six years Amenhotep closed his eyes upon that world-stage on which he had played so splendid a part.