should have been raised so as fully to conceal half of them both.* These statues are covered with inscriptions of Greek and Latin; the import of which seems to be, that there were certain travellers, or particular people, who heard Memnon's statue utter the sound it was said to do, upon being struck with the rays of the sun. It may be very reasonably expected, that I should here say something of the building and fall of the first Thebes; but as this would carry me into very early ages, and interrupt, for a long time, my voyage upon the Nile; as this is, besides, connected with the history of several nations, which I am about to describe, and more proper for the work of an historian, than the cursory descriptions of a traveller, I shall defer saying any thing upon the subject, till I come to treat of it in the first of these characters, and more especially till I shall speak of the origin of the Shepherds, and the calamities brought upon Egypt by that powerful nation, a people often mentioned by different writers, but whose history hitherto has been but imperfectly known. Nothing remains of the ancient Thebes but four prodigious temples, all of them in appearance more ancient, but neither so entire, nor so magnificent, as those of Dendera. The temples at Medinet Tabu are the most elegant of these. The hieroglyphics are cut to the depth of half-a-foot, in some places, but we have still the same figures, or rather a less variety, than at Dendera. * It is chiefly in the Delta where the mud is said to have accumulated. Probably the current at Thebes is too rapid to leave much on the shores near that city. E. The hieroglyphics are of four sorts; first, such as have only the contour marked, and, as it were, scratched in the stone. The second are hollowed; and in the middle of that space, excavated, rises the figure in relief, so that the prominent part of the figure is level with the flat, unwrought surface of the stone, which seems like a frame round it, designed to defend the hieroglyphic from mutilation. The third sort is in relief, or basso relievo, as it is called, where the figure is left bare and exposed, without being sunk in, or defended, by any compartment cut round it in the stone. The fourth are those mentioned in the beginning of this description, the outlines of the figure being cut very deep in the stone, and all the interior hollowed. All the hieroglyphics, but the last mentioned, which do not admit it, are painted red, blue, and green, as at Dendera, and with no other colours. Notwithstanding all this variety in the manner of executing the hieroglyphical figures, and the prodigious multitude which I have seen in the several buildings, I never could make the number of different hieroglyphics amount to more than five hundred and fourteen*, and of these there were certainly The hieroglyphics on the temples, and picture-writing, in general, were surely not intended to express words, but things.In the small work of Hor-apollo, we see clearly the plan on which that system was formed; and may readily conceive how five hundred characters, having each four or five different meanings, were sufficient to express all that the writers intended. The relative and varied composition of the figures must have influenced the meaning of each; and furnished a new species of signification. The sacred language, also, is now generally known to have been an artificial nomenclature of things founded on a fanciful relation between these and the gods. Thus, the soul was called a hawk, the sea, the foam of Typhon; the plant Artemisia, the many, which were not really different, but, from the ill execution of the sculpture, only appeared so. From this I conclude, that it can be no entire language which hieroglyphics are meant to express, for no language could be comprehended in five hundred words, and it is probable that these hieroglyphics are not alphabetical, or single letters only; for five hundred letters would make too large an alphabet. The Chinese, indeed, have many more letters in use, but no alphabet; but who is it that understands the Chinese? There are three different characters which, I observe, have been in use at the same time in Egypt; Hieroglyphics, the Mummy character, and the Ethiopic. These are all three found, as I have seen, on the same mummy, and, therefore, were certainly used at the same time. The last only, I believe, was a language. The mountains immediately above or behind Thebes, are hollowed out into numberless caverns, the first habitations of the Ethiopian colony which built the city. I imagine they continued long in these habitations, for I do not think the temples were ever intended but for heart of Bubastis; and painted in a manner corresponding to these. For Hence, the number of figures would be much reduced. some conventional symbol, or attitude of a divinity, would at one time denote the thing with which his character was artificially associated in the dialect of the priests, and, at another time, the god himself, without a metaphor. Possessing an artificial language, understood only by those who made it; accustomed to maintain a great number of imaginary properties, and false assertions in natural history, it is no wonder that the priests succeeded in concealing their knowledge, while alive, and burying it in their tombs, after death. public and solemn uses, and in none of these ancient cities did I ever see a wall or foundation, or any thing like a private house; all are temples and tombs, if temples and tombs in those times were not the same thing. But vestiges of houses there are none, whatever Diodorus Siculus may say; building with stone was too expensive for individuals; the houses, probably, were all of clay, thatched with palm branches, as they are at this day. This is one reason why so few ruins of the immense number of cities we hear of remain. Thebes, according to Homer, had a hundred gates. We cannot, however, discover yet the foundation of any wall that it had surrounding it; and, as for the horsemen and chariots, it is said to have sent out, all the Thebaid, sown with wheat, would not have maintained one half of them. Thebes, at least the ruins of the temples, called Medinet Tabu, which we can scarcely doubt were the remains of that city, are built in a long stretch of about a mile broad, most parsimoniously chosen at the sandy foot of the mountains. The Horti Pensilest, or hanging gardens, were surely formed upon the sides of these hills, then supplied with water by mechanical devices. The utmost is done to spare the plain, and with great reason; for all the space of ground this ancient city has had to maintain its myriads of horses and men, is a plain of three quarters of a mile broad, between the town and the river, upon which plain the water rises to the height of four, or five feet, as we may judge by the marks on the statues Shaamy and Taamy. All this Diod. Sic. lib. 1. pretended populousness of ancient Thebes I therefore believe fabulous, till stronger, evidence is brought to confirm it. It is a circumstance very remarkable, in building the first temples, that, where the side walls are solid, that is, not supported by pillars, some of these have their angles and faces perpendicular, others inclined in a very considerable angle to the horizon. Those temples, whose walls are inclined, you may judge, by the many hieroglyphics and ornaments, are of the first ages, or the greatest antiquity. From which, I am disposed to think, that singular construction was a remnant of the partiality of the builders for their first domiciles; an imitation of the slope *, or inclination of the sides of mountains, and that this inclination of flat surfaces to each other in building, gave afterwards the first idea of Pyramids t. A number of robbers, who much resemble our gypsies, live in the holes of the mountains above Thebes. They are all out-laws, punished with death, if elsewhere found. Osman Bey, an ancient governor of Girgé, unable to suffer any longer the disorders. committed by these people, ordered a quantity of dried faggots to be brought together, and, with his soldiers, took possession of the face of the mountain, where the greatest number of these wretches were: He then ordered all their caves to be filled with this dry brushwood, to which he set fire, so that most of them were destroyed; but they have since recruited their numbers, without changing their manners. See Norden's views of the Temples at Esné and Edfu. Vol. ii. plate 6. p. 80. This inclined figure of the sides, is frequently found in the small boxes within the mummy chests. |