to the second of the great pyramids, there were any record to make us quite certain that it thus contains and conceals an ancient inhabitant, much of this state of feeling would be experienced by reflective men in approaching it; at least if the beholder approached it in solitude and under the other circumstances favourable to solemn thought; though certainly the effect would be much less powerful from his seeing the mightiest of these abodes of death violated and vacant.

It is with a proper caution that we have said reflective men;' for Dr. Clarke has given a most gross and offensive instance of the total want of any thing belonging to this order of feelings, in a portion of our English invaders of Egypt. The opprobrious fact is, that the beautiful SOROS in the grand chamber of the pyramid, an object that had remained uninjured during nearly a hundred generations, having been held sacred by all sorts of barbarians, amid all manner of hostilities and ravages, is now no longer entire since Englishmen have had the free range of the country.

The soldiers and sailors of our army and navy having had frequent access to the interior of the pyramid, carried with them sledge-hammers, to break off pieces to be conveyed to England; and began, alas! the havoc of its demolition. Had it not been for the classical taste and laudable interference of Colonel, now General Stuart, then commanding officer in that district, who threatened to make an example of any individual whether officer or private, who should disgrace his country by thus waging hostility against History and the Arts, not a particle of the SOROS would have remained. Yet, as a proof of the difficulty which attended this worse than Scythian ravage, the persons who thus left behind them a sad memorial of the British name, had only succeeded in accomplishing a fracture near one of the angles. It was thus disfigured when we arrived; and every traveller of taste will join in reprobating any future attempt to increase the injury it has so lamentably sustained.'

Thus, in a place more majestically monumental than any other on earth, in the peculiar region of perpetuity, our people have secured a permanent monument to their disgrace. By means also of dilapidation, the French have left a lasting memorial, but which will not be among the recorded dishonours of their Egyptian expedition. They made a vigorous and persevering attempt to force an entrance into the interior of the third pyramid; and had there been time for prosecuting the operation, they would perhaps have disclosed another magnificent sanctuary of death, and found a tomb not deserted by its ancient inhabitant.

In the above observations we have assumed that the intention and use of the pyramids were such as history has represented; that the Egyptian monarchs constructed themn

for their tombs. But Dr. Clarke has started a different speculation respecting the great pyramid. He seems half willing to make it believed, that it was built by the Israelites for a temporary receptacle in which to deposite the body of Joseph, till the time should arrive at which they were to carry it away with them out of Egypt. And he reasons the matter with a very ingenious plausibility. very ingenious plausibility. But he will probably convince but very few readers, and indeed we think his own faith is of an extremely slight consistence. Not to remark that there seems something rather rashly bold in so completely and unceremoniously setting aside, at a stroke, the whole authority of the Greek historians, especially after the compliment just paid, in the passage we have transcribed, to the accuracy of the Ancients, in their descriptive notices at least, concerning ancient structures,-we should think there is insuperable improbability in the nature of the thing. Could it comport with the common sense of any set of human beings that ever lived, to employ, even if they had the power to do so, the labour of myriads, during a long course of years, and with a combination, in the plan and execution, of all possible adaptations to perpetuity, for a purpose confessedly temporary, and when a thousandth, perhaps a ten thousandth part of the toil would have created a solid receptacle for the venerated object; and when also that sacred object had already been preserved in safety for a long time without any such mighty munition?for a long space of time it surely must have been, subsequently to Joseph's death, before the family of Jacob could have grown to a sufficient multitude to make such a project appear feasible even to the most enthusiastic among their very dreamers. Add to this, that their patriotism and imagination might naturally operate in the way of contracting in prospect the probable duration of their sojourn in a land not their own.

So.

But, in the next place, supposing they had the disposition to act in a manner so very preposterous, it seems impossible to believe they could have had the power to do We presume no one can reflect on the enormous labour and expense of constructing the great pyramid, and not feel an irresistible conviction that such a work could not be carried on and completed-we do not say without the sanction of the supreme power of the state, but-without the direct anthority, assistance, and almost compulsion of that power. Now is it not against all manner of probability, that an Egyptian tyrant, long enough after Joseph's death probably, to have had for him little or no direct personal interest of friendship and gratitude, contemplating from his palace at Memphis an alien tribe, which had never combined or coalesced with his people, and which he and his people would

naturally regard through the medium of a jealous, oppressive, and calculating policy, devising how to turn them to most servile and gainful account,-that, under such circumstances, he would suffer them and aid them to withdraw the main force of their labours from the service of the state, and for an indefinite length of time, to raise for a person of their own tribe a funereal structure surpassing all that had ever been attempted in honour of the proud monarchs of Egypt themselves? We confess that nothing appears to us much more impossible to be believed.

When our Author and his companions approached the Sphinx, their attention was awakened to extreme curiosity by a reddish hue discernable over the whole mass, quite in'consistent with the common colour of the limestone used in building the pyramids, and of which the Sphinx itself is 'formed.'

This,' he says, induced us to examine more attentively the superficies of the statue: and having succeeded in climbing beneath the right ear of the figure, where the surface had never been broken, nor in any degree decomposed by the action of the atmosphere, we found, to our very great surprise, that the whole had once been painted of a dingy red or blood colour, like some of the stuccoed walls of the houses in Pompeii and Herculaneum.'

Nor was this all: he detected an inscription, written in black, upon the red surface; so concealed from ordinary observation by the height from the ground, and the shade of the ear, as to elude the vigilance of all former inspectors. Of the characters, partly Coptic and partly Arabic, with several curious monograms, he has given a fac-simile delineated with the utmost care: no attempt has been made to interpret them.

The next excursion, in which they passed what Dr. C. agrees with Savary in judging to be the site of Memphis, was to the pyramids of Saccára, which he regards as a 'continuation of the same great cemetery to which those of 'Djiza also belonged.' Those of Saccára bear the indications of still more remote antiquity, in the more decayed state of the surface, and in their less artificial and therefore more primitive form, as being nearer to that of the simple tumulus, the most ancient form, beyond all question, of sepulchral monument. These more southern pyramids are in different degrees of approach toward the tumulus and toward the finished pyramid; and as we proceed,' says Dr. C. surveying them from the south towards the north, ending with the principal pyramid of Djiza, we pass from the primeval mound, through all its modifications, until we arrive at the most artificial pyramidal heap.'

in

One of these southern masses is built of unburnt bricks, and is in a very mouldering state. The bricks contain shells, gravel, and chopped straw. There is one which Pococke thought as large as the principal one at Djiza. Like, in a measure, to that grand pyramid, a number of these southern ones are graduated, but not with so great a number of steps, one of the most conspicuous consisting of only six tiers or ranges of stone; the pyramid itself being a hundred and fifty feet in height.'

At Saccára the Author descended into several of the rifled catacombs, found scattered fragments of mummies, and observed with the most pointed attention the form and dimensions of the niches where the bodies had been placed, in order to decide the question whether they were laid in a recumbent, or set in an upright position. And between his observations here, and information acquired elsewhere, he was satisfied, to absolute certainty, that they were placed horizontally. These subterranean apartments had an oppressively offensive smell, for which he could not at all account.

There is no gaining access to the catacombs where any of the mummies are remaining entire. They are most carefully concealed and obstructed by the Arabs, who make an unworthy trade of their contents. The repositories of embalmed birds are allowed to be examined. Dr. C. descended into one of them, stored with a countless multitude of the earthen jars containing them, piled in ranks over and behind one another. His description, and the subsequent observations on the veneration felt for the Ibis, and the cause of such immense accumulations of these birds, are curious.

Towards the close of the dissertation on the origin and design of the pyramids, he has brought together in a note, the opinions of many learned men on the question,-hardly perhaps worth such a consumption of time and intellect as these references alone would suffice to shew that it has costwhether the Egyptian god named Apis, Serapis, and Osiris, was not in truth a deification of the patriarch Joseph. Dr. C. appears considerably inclined to adopt the affirmative. This would explain, he thinks, various particulars in the Egyptian mythology and ritual. Thus, the annual mournings which took place for the loss of the body of Osiris, and the exhibition of an empty Soros upon those occasions, might 'be ceremonies derived from the loss of Joseph's body, which had been carried away by the Hebrews when they left the country. If,' he says, the connexion between ancient Egyptian mythology and Jewish history had been duly traced, an evident analogy founded upon events which have

·

reference to the carliest annals of the Hebrews, might be made manifest.'

One of the excursions from the head-quarters at Caïro, was to the undoubted site of the ancient Heliopolis, the On of the Mosaic history; where stands, on the spot where the 'Hebrews had their first settlement' the celebrated Obelisk, the only great work of antiquity,' says our Author, now remaining in all the land of Goshen.' Its height is between sixty and seventy feet; its breadth at the base, six feet: the whole being one entire mass of reddish granite. From 'the coarseness of the sculpture, as well as the history of the 'city to which this obelisk belonged, there is reason to believe it the oldest monument of the kind in Egypt.' An engraving is given from the drawing, in making which he was particularly attentive to preserve the rude character of the sculptured hieroglyphics, instead of misrepresenting them, as it is justly complained that travellers have been in the habit of doing, in such subjects, by giving more correctly delineated forms of the objects they suppose to have been intended by the ancient sculptor.

Dr. Clarke, though evidently one of the very last men to despair of the attainment of any object important to knowledge and literature, seems to surrender all hope on the subject of the elucidation of the Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Isis long ago declared, that no mortal had ever removed her veil; and the impenetrable secret seems not likely to be divulged. One solitary fact has been vouchsafed to ages of restless inquiry upon this subject; namely, that the hieroglyphic characters constituted a written language, the signs of an ancient alphabet. expressed according to the most ancient mode of writing, in capital letters and it is probable that the more compound forms were a series of monograms.'

:

He several times adverts to it as a curious fact, apparently well established, that the alphabetical characters of ancient Egyptian writing, were formed from the hieroglyphics, by a gradual change, or degeneration of those signs from their primitive form, of pictures of visible objects, into types at last very little more than arbitrary.

The noted Crux Ansata, or cross surmounted with a ring as a handle, so continually recurring among the hieroglyphics, is regarded as the only one of them that has had the misfortune to be detected. Our Author cites the authority of those early Christian writers, who, on the testimony of converted heathens, bave declared it to typify life to come:" this he thinks may be admitted as its abstracted or symbolical meaning; his opinion of its immediate signification he has not done much amiss to leave in the Latin of Jablonski.