256 
springing up behind him, brought horse and 
man in an instant to the ground. Luckily 
the boor was unhurt, and the lion was too 
eager in worrying the horse to pay any im- 
mediate attention to the rider. Hardly 
knowing himself how he escaped, he con- 
trived to scramble out of the fray, and made 
a clean pair of heels of it till he reached 
the nearest house. Lucas, who gaye me 
the details of this adventure himself, .made 
no observations on it as being any way re- 
markable, except in the circumstance of the 
lion’s audacity in pursuing a “ Christian 
man” without provocation in open day! 
But what chiefly vexed him in the affair 
was the loss of the saddle. He returned 
next day with a party of friends to take 
vengeance on his feline foe; put both the 
lion and saddle had disappeared, and no- 
thing could be found but the horse’s clean- 
picked bones. Lucas said, he could have 
excused the schelm for killing the horse, as 
he had allowed himself to get away, but 
the felonious abstraction of the saddle (for 
which, as Lucas gravely observed, he could 
have no possible use), raised his spleen 
mightily, and called down a: shower of 
curses whenever he told the story of this 
hair-breadth escape. 
GREECE. 
There has been found in Greece, in 
digging the ruins of a temple dedicated 
to Saturn, a great number of manu- 
scripts that date from very remote pe- 
riods. In Macedonia, we are assured, 
has been discovered the manuscript of 
the famous J/iad, inclosed in a cedar 
box, with plates of gold, which belonged 
to Alexander the Great ! 
EGYPT. 
M..Champollion, jun., having pro- 
ceeded to Turin under the auspices of 
his Majesty, to study the collection of 
Egyptian antiquities brought together 
by M. Drouette, and forming at pre- 
sent the Royal Egyptian Museum of 
the King of Piedmont, has already made 
known some of the principal monu- 
ments of this museum. We extract 
the following communications from his 
letters : 
’ By the kind permission of his Excel- 
leney Count Chale, Minister of the Inte- 
rior, I have gained admission to the Royal 
Egyptian Museum. I had previously ad- 
mired, in the palace of the university, a fine 
statue of Sesostris, in rose granite, eight 
feet high ; the upper part of a statue of the 
wife of that king, the Queen Ari; and ano- 
ther statue with a lion’s head, similar to 
two statues in the Museum of Paris, and 
bearing an inscription of the reign of Ame- 
nophis II. It was on the 9th June that I 
visited for the first time the Egyptian 
Museum ; nothing is comparable to this 
Literary and Miscellaneous Intelligence. 
[OersI, 
immense collection. I found the court 
crowded wtth colossal figures in rose gra- 
nite and green basalt. The interior is also 
peopled with colossal monuments. A first 
examination discovered to me a group of 
eight feet in height; it turned out to be 
Amon-Ra, seated, having beside him King 
Horus, son of Amenophis II. of the 
eighteenth dynasty—an admirable work ; 
I had seen nothing equal to this. 2dly. A 
colossal statue of King Misphra-Thouth- 
mosis, in the same state of preservation as 
when it issued from the workshop. 3dly. 
A Monolith six feet high; it represents 
Ramses the Great (Sesostris), seated upon 
a throne between Amon-Ra and Neith, of 
rose granite, and is a perfect work. 4thly. A 
colossal figure of King Meeris, green ba- 
salt, of exquisite workmanship. 5thly. A 
statue, erect, of Amenophis II. 6thly. A 
statue of the god Phtha, executed in the 
time of the last-mentioned king. 7thly. A 
group of free-stone, representing King 
Amenoftep, of the nineteenth dynasty, and 
his wife, Queen Atari. Sthly. A statue, 
larger than life, of Ramses the Great 
(Sesostris), in green basalt, finished like 
a Cameo; upon the steps of the throne 
are sculptured, in full relief, his son and 
wife. The number of funeral statues in 
basalt, red and white free-stone, white cal- 
careous stone and grey granite, is very con- 
siderable ; amongst them is one of a man 
crouching, whose tunic bears an inserip- 
tion in the Egyptian vulgar tongue, of four 
lines. The steles of four, five, and six feet 
in height, exceed the number of a hundred; 
there is an altar covered with hieroglyphic 
inscriptions, with a great number of other 
objects of antiquity. This comprizes only 
one part of the collection, and there remain 
two or three hundred packages to be open- 
ed. The number of manuscripts is one 
hundred and seventy-one, of which forty- 
seven are already unrolled. Among these 
I have discovered about ten contracts in 
the Demotiec writing, a Greek papyrus, 
and a law-suit between two inhabitants of 
Thebes relative to the ownership of a 
house; the pretensions of the parties 
pleading and the means of the advocates 
are analysed, and the laws favourable to 
their respective pretensions textually cited. 
At the end is the actual judgment, which 
was delivered in the fifty-fourth year of 
Ptolemy Evergetus II. A_ bilingual in- 
seription in Egyptian and Greek, and a 
decree in honour of a prefect of the town- 
ship of Thebes, and rendered under the 
reign of Cleopatra and her son Cesarion, 
whose name I had already proyed the ac- 
tual reign by the perusal of aseroll sculp- 
tured upon the temple of Dendera. But 
that which is most~interesting is that 
among the papyrus of the collection, is a 
Phenician’ Manuscript ; unfortunately there 
are but fragments of it, but perhaps others 
may be found amongst those not yet un-~ 
rolled. ' 
