Names on the Colossus

“At some little distance in the plain are two colossi, placed side by side, both seated, and with faces turned towards the East. I could not consider them without a sort of terror at such mountainous figures wrought by the hand of man, who had even engraven his image upon them. No longer does one of these statues utter harmonious sounds to salute Aurora, and strike sense of the traveller by reminding him of the first rosy streaks of the morning. Here are inscriptions in all languages, indicative of a sensibility filled with admiration, and expressive of its first ebullitions, as the anxious spectator felt them.
The names of several domini terrarum, lords of the earth, are discernible on the feet of the colossus, but our eyes rest, with a rational, a fondly cherished esteem, on the name of Germanicus, inasmuch as the progress of his journeyings into Upper Egypt was universally marked by the most pleasing and authentic traits of his beneficence. I know not whether it will excite a smile of contempt, but the scene produce in me a singular stage effect, when, I found an obscure baronet commemorating his route to Thebes, with his name on the granite in close connexion with Cæsar’s. It had been recently done, and not without some trouble. I will not say that this gentlement shewed the superiority of his intellect when he records the particular part of London wherein he dwells. A neighbouring hermit (were there such an one) might have arrested his hand, and informed him that a truly honest ambition is modest, and that this statue contains not the names of Desaix, of Rapp, and of Belliard. There is nothing hereabout to recall the remembrance of the combat of Seydiman and Benouthak.”

From Travels in Egypt
by Count de Forbin, 1817-18