those Arabian hills which stretch towards the south. Thus the country beyond Heliopolis differs exceedingly from the rest of Egypt, and may be passed in a journey of four days. The intermediate space betwixt these mountains is an open plain, in its narrowest part not more in extent than two hundred stadia, measuring from the Arabian to what is called the Libyan mountain, from whence Ægypt becomes again wider. IX. From Heliopolis to Thebes " is a voyage of about nine days, or a space of four thousand eight 17 Thebes.]-According to Norden, ancient Thebes was probably in the place where Luxor and Carnac now stand. A better idea of the magnificence and extent of Thebes cannot perhaps be given, than by the following lines translated from Homer: Not all proud Thebe's unrivall'd walls contain, The world's great empress on th' Ægyptian plain, Diodorus Siculus and Strabo both speak in the most exalted terms of its opulence and power. "Never was there a city," observes the former of these writers, "which received so many offerings in silver, gold, ivory, colossal statues, and obelisks." There were in particular four temples greatly admired. Near this place stood the celebrated vocal statue of Memnon. Its eastern part only was called Diospolis, according to Pococke. This traveller, without citing his authority, remarks, that in the opinion of some writers, Thebes eight hundred and sixty stadia, equivalent to eighty-one schani. I have before observed, that the Thebes was the Sheba of the Scriptures; and that the Greeks, having no way of writing this word, altered it to Thebai.Since the first edition of this work appeared, this place has been explored by multitudes of curious travellers, and it would be easy from the works of Brenne, Sonnini, and crowds of French writers, to fill many pages with curious particulars concerning the present condition of this remarkable city. I must be satisfied with generally referring the reader to those different publications, extracting only the following striking paragraph from Denon, the friend and companion. of Bonaparte: "At nine o'clock, in making a sharp turn round the point of a projecting chain of mountains, we discovered all at once the site of the ancient Thebes in its whole extent: this celebrated city, the size of which Homer has characterized by the single expression of, with a hundred gates, (a boasting and poetical phrase that has been repeated with so much confidence for so many centuries); this illustrious city, described in a few pages by Herodotus, by Ægyptian priests, that have since been copied by every historian, celebrated by the number of its kings, whose wisdom had raised them to the rank of gods by laws which have been revered without being promulgated, by science involved in pompous and enigmatical inscriptions, the first monuments of ancient learning which are still spared by the hand of time: this abandoned sanctuary, surrounded with barbarism, and again restored to the desert from which it had been drawn forth, enveloped in the veil of mystery and the obscurity of ages, whereby even its own colossal monuments are magnified to the imagination, still impressed the mind with such gigantic phantoms, that the whole army suddenly, and with one accord, stood in amazement at the sight of its scattered ruins, and clapped their hands with delight, as if the end and ob ject the length of the Egyptian coast is three thousand six hundred stadia; from the coast to Thebes is six thousand one hundred and twenty stadia; from Thebes to Elephantine 18 eight hundred and twenty. X. The ject of their glorious toils, and the complete conquest of Egypt, were accomplished and secured by taking possession of the splendid remains of this ancient metropolis." Allowing for the pompous verbosity of the Frenchman, and presuming on the truth of his narrative, it must be confessed that the circumstance of a whole army making an instantaneous halt, as by one common emotion, at the sight of these ruins, and from the impression of their grandeur, presents the mind with a noble and magnificent picture. 18 Elephantine.]-In this place was a temple of Cnuph, and a nilometer.-It is now called Kezieret el Sag, which, in Arabic, is "The Flowery Island."-The following account of its present condition is from Denon: The Island of Elephantine became at the same time my country house and my palace of delight, observation, and research; I think I must have turned over every loose stone, and questioned every rock in the island. It was at its southern extremity that the Ægyptian town and the Roman habitations were situated, and the Arabian buildings which succeeded them. The part occupied by the Romans can only now be made out by the bricks, the tessellated pavements, and the small images of porcelain and bronze which are still found: the Arab quarter is only distinguished by the dunghills with which they have covered the soil, a common feature to all the ruins of this people. Every thing posterior to this time has disappeared, so as to leave scarcely the least trace of its existence, whilst the Egyptian monuments remain devoted to posterity, and have resisted equally the ravages of man and of time. In the midst of this vast field of bricks and other pieces of baked earth, a very ancient temple 19 X. The greater part of the country described above, as I was informed by the priests, (and my own observation induced me to be of the same opinion) has been a gradual acquisition " to the inhabitants. The country above Memphis, between the hills before mentioned, seems formerly to have been an arm of the sea, and is not unlike the region about Ilium, Teuthrania, Ephesus, and the plain of the Meander, if we may be allowed to compare small things with great. It must certainly be allowed, that none of the streams which water the above country, may in depth or in magnitude compare with any one of the five arms of the Nile*. I could mention other rivers, which, though temple is still left standing, surrounded with a pilastered gallery, and two columns in the portico. 19 Acquisition.]-This remark of Herodotus is confirmed by Arrian and by Pliny.-T. * Herodotus first calls in this place this wonderful river by its popular name, the Nile. According to Shaw, the inhabitants pronounce it short, Nil, and he assigns reasons for this being a contraction of Nahhal, that is, The River, by way of eminence. Abdollatif derives it from Nal, which signifies to give or to be liberal. This, says Shaw, is rather a fine thought than a just account of the real origin of the name. The Nile is called by the Greeks Mexas, that is Niger. We are told by Pausanias, that the image of the Nile was black, whilst those of all the other river gods were white. The Hindu name for the Nile is Cali, and in the Sanscrit language Cala signifies black. The following is from Lieu tenant though inferior to the Nile, have produced many wonderful effects; of these, the river Achelous 20 is by no means the least considerable. This flows through Acarnania, and, losing itself in the sea which washes the Echinades", has connected one half of those islands with the continent. tenant Wilford's Dissertation on Ægypt and the Nile, from the ancient books of the Hindus : By the Greeks, Romans, and Hebrews, the Nile, which is clearly a Sanscrit word, was known also by the following names:-Melas, Melo, Ægyptos Sihor or Sikhor, Nous or Nus, Aetos, Siris, Oceanus, Triton, Potamos. See this Dissertation in the Asiatic Researches, 8vo. ed. vol. iii. p. 304, where many curious particulars may be found on this subject. Mr. Wilford thinks that Potamos is derived from the Sanscrit word padma, which he says is the nymphæa of Linnæus, and most certainly the Lotus of the Nile. When Herodotus speaks of the length of Ægypt, he reckons from the Sebennitic mouth.-Larcher. 20 Achelous.]-This river, from its violence and rapidity, was anciently called Thoas. Homer calls it the king of rivers. Its present name is Aspro Potamo. Hercules, by checking the inundations of this river by mounds, was said to have broken off one of his horns; whence the cornucopia.-T. The sea and the continent may be considered as two great empires, whose places are fixed, but which sometimes dispute the possession of some of the smaller adjacent countries. Sometimes the sea is compelled to contract its limits by the mud and the sands which the rivers force along with them; sometimes these limits are extended by the action of the waters of the ocean.-Voyage du Jeune Anacharsis. of Echinades.]-These islands, according to the old Greek historians, are so close upon the coast of Elis, that many them had been joined to it by means of the Achelous, which VOL. I. X still |