Bose-coloured Syenite of Eyypt. 256 



vessels trading with Alexandria, and is designated in com- 

 merce by the name of the Eastern lied Granite.'^ 



Great quantities of fragments of syenite are found in the 

 ruins of all the ancient towns of Egypt ; and the imagination 

 is really tasked when thinking of the difficulties presented in 

 the cutting, polishing, and transporting of so many gigantic 

 monuments. The most celebrated of these are, according to 

 De Roziere, those of the isles of Philae and Elephantine, those 

 of Thebes, Luxor, Heliopolis, and especially of Alexandria; and 

 although the syenite was extracted in the country surround- 

 ing Syene, yet the fragments are more and more abundant 

 the further we descend the Nile towards the north ; which is 

 to be ascribed, as M. De Roziere has shown, to the fact that 

 the seats of government necessarily approached the Mediter- 

 ranean, and that the requisite material for the numerous 

 sacred and palatial structures was wanting in that northern 

 region of Egypt which is essentially calcareous and gravelly. 



The syenite was of all rocks the one preferred by the Egyp- 

 tians, and they employed it for the construction of their most 

 remarkable monuments : of these monuments there might be 

 cited the obelisks, the sphinxes, the sarcophagi found in all 

 parts of Egypt, Pompey's Pillar, and Cleopatra's Needle, 

 at Alexandria, both the inside and outside of the great pyra- 

 mid of Cheops, and particularly the monolith sanctuary of 

 Sais. At Paris may be seen one of the Luxor obelisks, and 

 in the Egyptian Museum at the Louvre, the feet and head of 

 a colossal statue of Amenophis III., as well as a great num- 

 ber of sculptures, which under the ever pure sky of Egypt, 

 for the greater part have not suffered any alteration, even 

 perfectly preserving their polish, for nearly 4000 years.t 



* Brard, Mineralogie appliqu^e aux Arts, t. ii., p. 241. 

 t The Monumental Egyptian syenites of the British Museum are well 

 known. 



