They wear the headgear of the Sphinx, and are gigantic human forms seated on thrones--the colossal statues of Memnon.

We recognise them at once, for the picture-makers of succeeding ages have popularised their aspect, as in the case of the pyramids.

What is strange is that they should stand there so simply in the midst of these fields of growing corn, which reach to their very feet, and be surrounded by these humble birds we know so well, who sing without ceremony on their shoulders.
They do not seem to be scandalised even at seeing now, passing quite close to them, the trucks of a playful little railway belonging to a local industry, that are laden with sugar-canes and gourds.
The chain of Libya, during the last hour, has been growing gradually larger against the profound and excessively blue sky.

And now that it rises up quite near to us, overheated, and as it were incandescent, under this ten o'clock sun, we begin to see on all sides, in front of the first rocky spurs of the mountains, the debris of palaces, colonnades, staircases and pylons.

Headless giants, swathed like dead Pharaohs, stand upright, with hands crossed beneath their shroud of sandstone.