104 On the Mamtfacture of Glass, Porcelain, ^c. 



Memnonium, which weighed about 886 tons, and was brought 

 over land from the quarries at the cataracts of Syene, a distance 

 of more than 120 miles. 



Many obelisks, each of a single block of granite, had already 

 been hewn and transported from the same quarries, as early 

 at least as the reign of Osirtasen I., whom I suppose to have 

 been the contemporary of Joseph ; and the same mechanical 

 skill had already existed even before that period, as is shewn 

 from the construction of those wonderfvil monuments the pyra- 

 mids, near Memphis, which, in the size of the blocks and their 

 style of building, evince a degree of architectural knowledge, 

 perhaps inferior to none possessed at a subsequent epoch. But 

 it was not generally called forth in early times ; they were 

 then contented with monuments of an inferior scale, and their 

 ordinary buildings were not of the same gigantic dimensions. 

 A grand work was then seldom undertaken without an adequate 

 motive, and the knowledge they possessed was reserved for 

 particular and extraordinary occasions, but when riches and 

 the love of show increased, they extended the size of their 

 temples, and constant practice having made the means familiar 

 to them, artisans and engineers vied with each other in hewing 

 and transporting colossal statues, monoliths, and other ponde- 

 rous monuments, which served for ornament and the display of 

 their mechanical knowledge. 



It was not in this branch of science alone that the Egyptians 

 excelled ; the wonderful skill they evinced in sculpturing or 

 engraving hard stones is still more surprising, and we wonder 

 at the means employed for cutting hieroglyphics, frequently to 

 the depth of more than two inches, on basalt, on syenite, and 

 other stones of the hardest quality. Nor were they deficient in 

 taste, — a taste too not acquired by imitating approved models, 

 but claiming for itself the praise of originality, and universally 

 allowed to have been the parent of much that was afterwards 

 perfected with such wonderful success by the most highly 

 gifted of nations, the ancient Greeks ; and no one can look 

 upon the elegant forms of many of the Egyptian vases, the or- 

 namental designs of their architecture, or the furniture of their 

 rooms, without conceding to them due praise on this point, and 



