As Seti constructed the most wonderful of all the palatial buildings which Egypt produced, so he also constructed what is, on the whole, the most wonderful of the tombs.  The pyramids impose upon us by their enormity, and astonish by the engineering skill shown in their execution; but they embody a single simple idea; they have no complication of parts, no elaboration of ornament; they are taken in at a glance; they do not gradually unfold themselves, or furnish a succession of surprises.  But it is otherwise with the rock-tombs, whereof Seti’s is the most magnificent The rock-tombs are “gorgeous palaces, hewn out of the rock, and painted with all the decorations that could have been seen in palaces.”  They contain a succession of passages, chambers, corridors, staircases, and pillared halls, each further removed from the entrance than the last, and all covered with an infinite variety of the most finished and brilliant paintings.  The tomb of Seti contains three pillared halls, respectively twenty-seven feet by twenty-five, twenty-eight feet by twenty-seven, and forty-three feet by seventeen and a half; a large saloon with an arched roof, thirty feet by twenty-seven; six smaller chambers of different sizes; three staircases, and two long corridors.  The whole series of apartments, from end to end of the tomb, is continuously ornamented with painted bas-reliefs.  “The idea is that of conducting the king to the world of death.  The further you advance into the tomb, the deeper you become involved in endless processions of jackal-headed gods, and monstrous forms of genii, good and evil; and the goddess of Justice, with her single ostrich feather; and barges carrying mummies, raised aloft over the sacred lake; and mummies themselves; and, more than all, everlasting convolutions of serpents in every possible form and attitude—­human-legged, human-headed, crowned, entwining mummies, enwreathing or embraced by processions, extending down whole galleries, so that meeting the head of a serpent at the top of a staircase, you have to descend to its very end before you reach his tail.  At last you arrive at the close of all—­the vaulted hall, in the centre of which lies the immense alabaster sarcophagus, which ought to contain the body of the king.  Here the processions, above, below, and around, reach their highest pitch—­meandering round and round—­white, and black, and red, and blue—­legs and arms and wings spreading in enormous forms over the ceilings; and below lies the sarcophagus itself."[25]

The greatest of the works of Ramesses are of a different description, and are indicative of that inordinate vanity which is the leading feature of his character.  They are colossal images of himself.  Four of these, each seventy feet in height, form the facade of the marvellous rock-temple of Ipsambul—­“the finest of its class known to exist anywhere”—­and constitute one of the most impressive sights which the world has to offer.  There stands the Great