Note 121 — Chapter XVI · ABOU SIMBEL.

This cast, the property of the British Museum, is placed over a door leading to the library at the end of the northern vestibule, opposite the staircase. I was informed by the late Mr. Bonomi that the mold was made by Mr. Hay, who had with him an Italian assistant picked up in Cairo. They took with them some barrels of plaster and a couple of ladders, and contrived, with such spars and poles as belonged to the dahabeeyah, to erect a scaffolding and a matted shelter for the plasterman. The colossus was at this time buried up to its chin in sand, which made the task so much the easier. When the mold of the head was brought to England, it was sent to Mr. Bonomi’s studio, together with a mold of the head of the colossus at Mitrahenny, a mold of the apex of the fallen obelisk at Karnak, and molds of the wall-sculptures at Bayt-et-Welly. Mr. Bonomi superintended the casting and placing of all these in the museum about three years after the molds were made. This was at the time when Mr. Hawkins held the post of keeper of antiquities. I mention these details, not simply because they have a special interest for all who are acquainted with Abou Simbel, but because a good deal of misapprehension has prevailed on the subject, some travelers attributing the disfigurement of the head to Lepsius, others to the Crystal Palace Company, and so forth. Even so careful a writer as the late Miss Martineau ascribes it, on hearsay, to Champollion.