CHAPTER II.

THE MOST REMARKABLE MONUMENTS OF EGYPTDESCRIPTION-INCIDENTS RELATING TO THEM AND THEIR HISTORY.

Alexandria, Obelisks and Pompey's Pillar-Cairo-Heliopolis, the Pyramids and the Sphinx-Memphis and Mummy Pits-The Field of Zoan"-Tombs and Grottoes of Beni Hassan-Abydos and Tablet of Kings-Denderah, Temple and Zodiac-Thebes, the Memnonium and Palace of Medinet Abou-Vocal Colossus-Luxor and Great Hall of Karnac-Esneh-Edfou-Syene and the Island of Elephantine-Island of Philæ.

A DESCRIPTION of the monuments of Ancient Egypt may be arranged according to various methods. It would be easy to begin with the most massive and magnificent, and then descend gradually to the more insignificant and minute; or they might be taken in the order of time, beginning with those of the remotest antiquity, and concluding with such as are comparatively of modern date. If, like the fresh memorials of Herculaneum and Pompeii, they were before us in their complete and original state, it would be obviously most easy to follow them exactly as they stand, to journey on from city to city, and temple to temple, enumerating and describing their peculiarities as we passed along.

Time, however, has been busily employed on these ancient structures; the sands of the desert are burying many of them out of our sight, new temples have been built out of the ruins of the old, and some of the most illustrious monuments of Egypt no longer remain in the Valley of the Nile, but have been transplanted by modern nations to adorn their capitals, or give value to their museums of art. Notwithstanding, however, these obstacles and changes, so many and so powerful are the associations of locality, that we think the best mode of giving the reader a general idea of Egyptian monuments, is to traverse in imagination the soil on which they all originally stood, and by help of our knowledge of the past to conceive of them as they formerly existed, undisturbed by the ancient and modern conqueror.

We invite our readers, then, to a journey to Egypt. According to the ordinary route, on the termination of the voyage by sea, Alexandria is the first part of Egypt at which the traveller arrives. It is the city of Alexander the Great, founded by him B.C. 332, as a commodious harbour, with the view of there concentrating the commerce of Europe, Arabia, and the far distant India. He is said to have designed the city with his own hand, and to have marked out his plans by a quantity of meal sprinkled on the ground. It is built upon the land between the Lake Mareotis and the harbour which is formed by the Isle of Pharos, a long narrow island running along the coast.

The city lies twelve miles to the west of the Canopic mouth of the Nile. This mouth of the river is the western one, and is so called from an ancient city, Canopus, which has long since fallen to decay, and even the site of which has become unknown, though it was probably situated at this mouth of the Nile. Alexandria is said by some persons to be a more healthful residence than the towns further from the coast, but the water of the city is very unwholesome, and the plague makes its appearance here sooner by some days than in the interior. Cisterns are

found under a great part of the old city, and it is from them that the inhabitants of modern Alexandria derive their water. When the inundation of the Nile is at its height, the water percolates through the soil and fills these

cisterns.

The Island of Pharos has given a name to any lighthouse for the direction of seamen, from the celebrated one erected at its eastern extremity. In the age when the world was reckoned to have seven wonders, this was accounted one of them. It was a square building of white marble, about four hundred feet in height, built by Ptolemy Soter and Ptolemy Philadelphus. It consisted of several stories and galleries, and fires were kept constantly lighted on the top by night to direct the sailors into the bay. Mirrors were so fixed in the upper galleries that the ships sailing in the sea were visible in them. The emperor Claudius so admired this structure, that he took it for

his model in the erection of one at Ostia, at the mouth of the Tiber. Pliny commends the magnanimity of Ptolemy, the king of Egypt, in allowing the architect to inscribe his own name, rather than his sovereign's, on this edifice; but there is another version of the story. It is said that the original inscription was in stucco, and that it bore the king's name. After the death, however, of the Ptolemy by whose aid it was erected, the stucco crumbled away, and an inscription in stone became manifest, to the glory of Sostratus of Cnidus, son of Dexiphanes, the architect.

The city of Alexandria was remarkable for its once noble library, the largest collection of books ever made previous to the invention of printing. It is said to have contained 700,000 volumes, and was founded and sustained, at the suggestion of Demetrius Phalereus, by Ptolemy I. and his successors. In the war carried on by Julius Cæsar, 400,000 volumes were destroyed by fire. It suffered by degrees in the wars and tumults that followed, and was finally destroyed by the Arabs, A.D. 640, who found in these precious remains of antiquity sufficient fuel to heat for the space of six months the four thousand baths Alexandria is said to have contained. The Arab general was solicited to spare the library, and wrote to his sovereign for instructions. He received as an answer to his inquiry the message, "As to the books which you have mentioned, if they contain what is agreeable with the book of God, the book of God is sufficient

without them; and if they contain what is contrary to the book of God, there is no need of them, so let them be destroyed." As a consequence of this order, manuscripts were consigned to the flames, which, had they existed to the present time, would doubtless have greatly enlarged our materials of information respecting Ancient Egypt.

Two obelisks of granite mark the site of the Cæsarium, or palace of the Cæsars. An obelisk is a single block of stone, cut into a four-sided form. The horizontal width gradually decreases at each side upwards to the top of the shaft, which is surmounted by a small pyramid. The word obelisk is derived from a Greek word signifying a spit. Those at Alexandria are sixty-five feet high and seven or eight square at the base. They are known among the Arabs by the name of Pharaoh's Packing -needles, and one of them which is standing, with the other prostrate beside it, is known generally as Cleopatra's Needle. The English have several times contemplated removing the fallen one, the transport of which to this country it is estimated would cost £15,000, but no steps have yet been taken for the accomplishment of this object. Both of the obelisks are of the peculiar granite known as the Syenite, from Syene, the place of the quarry where the Egyptian obelisks were dug out and carved. According to Champollion Figeac, they bear the name of Thothmes III., of the date of 1756 B.C., and on their sides is that also of Ramses