Cigarette Card

Wills’s Cigarettes “Wonders of the Past” Cigarette Card #1 “Colossus at Abu-Simbel”

Produced in 1926 by W. D. & H. O. Wills.

Issued by The Imperial Tobacco Company (of Great Britain & Ireland) Ltd.

Text on reverse of card reads:

“That the amazing colossi before the doorway of a rock- hewn temple on the upper Nile have excited wonder from the earliest times is attested by inscriptions of Greek mercenaries of the sixth century B.C. The statues, four in number, were hewn 700 years earlier still, and are one with the sandstone cliff from which the temple was carved. They represent Rameses II of the Nineteenth Dynasty, while smaller figures between their legs and at either side are of members of the royal household. The temple was dedicated partly to the sun- god and partly to the pharaoh himself as an incarnate deity.”