1825. ] 
To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. 
Sir: 
HEN the first accounts reached 
this country of the extraordinary 
discovery made by the amiable and in- 
defatigable Mr. Belzoni, of a transpa- 
rent Soros, of one entire piece of ala- 
baster or arragonite, covered both in- 
side and out with hieroglyphics of a 
new and interesting character, very few 
people could be brought to give entire 
credit to the news; fragments of the 
broken cover, however, which he shewed 
to me and many others, together with 
his own assurances, on which all who 
knew him could place implicit credit, 
only excited an anxious desire for its 
safe arrival, and a proud hope that this 
country would, by his instrumentality, 
be made possessor of the treasure, 
which, certainly, as a unique rarity, is 
above all price, and might add glory to 
any museum in the world. To have 
found such an unimagined jewel—to 
have secured it in such a solitude—to 
have been able to have rescued it, at 
the risk of life, from the banditti of 
malcontents that surrounded it like the 
wolves of the desert—to have tran- 
sported such a fragile bulky article to 
Cairo and Alexandria—and, lastly, to 
have so enveloped it, on ship-board, as 
to get it entire to England, manifested 
a chain of fortunate circumstances, that 
even this sanguine and comprehensive- 
minded man could scarcely have con- 
templated! But what must have been 
his feelings, when, on rushing to meet 
the reward of all his labours, he saw it 
snatched from his anxious hopes, and 
deposited, without his concurrence, in 
a retired chamber of the British Mu- 
seum! While he was denied (the only 
boon he asked, and for which he would, 
as he assured me, have given up his 
legal claims to a moiety of the profits 
arising from the sale), the privilege and 
honour of exhibiting and explaining its 
real situation at Thebes to the English 
public, for a few months in Piccadilly, 
Well aware, as he owned, that the pro- 
fits would have amply recompensed him 
for all his cares, and the honours for 
all the slights he had received in this 
country, after the decease of Sir Joseph 
Banks, who, I believe, profoundly appre- 
ciated his value, as an honest, intrepid 
and unaffected man. 
_When I saw the fine model of the 
chamber in which it was discovered, 
and strolled for whole days among 
these amazing catacombs, and knew that 
the original Soros, the object of all this 
immense labour, though safely landed, 
Mr. Cumberland on Belzoni's Egyptian Soros. 
315 
and within a mile of the spct, lay in 
silence and neglect, where few could, 
and none had a right to see it, I felt, 
as all must, the source of his galling 
uneasiness ; and this, and the public ig- 
norance of the importance of the exhi- 
bition he had brought over,—owing, I 
will say, to the negligence of our men 
of letters on the subject, which I cannot 
but attribute to his being a foreigner, 
united to some latent jealousy among 
the accredited men of science, who ad- 
mit no intruders into their separate 
kingdoms ; — these and other causes, 
which shall be nameless, I am sure, 
threw a damp over his success, and, 
finally, compelled him hastily to close 
a masterpiece of ingenuity, and a mirror 
of past ages, not less interesting than 
the ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii 
a school for the unenlightened, and a 
lesson for the Akerblads, Champollions, 
De Sacys, and others, to be cautious 
how they boast of having unveiled Isis, 
because they haye made some good 
conjectures as to names of princes, and 
guesses as to more important things: 
for, with respect to demonstrative disco- 
veries in hieroglyphic language, we 
shall be compelled to wait until the 
goddess is more benign. 
To guesses, therefore, from pictorial 
resemblances we must, after all, I fear, 
resign ourselves, and be satisfied with 
the old story of the Judgment of the 
Soul, and the discovery of the aquatic, 
and some. other embiems—which have 
been known from the time of Father 
Kircher and his followers, down to 
Liethulier the antiquary, being content 
to add a few more occasionally, as new 
and more perfect objects arise. But to 
these we might, I think, accumulate a 
great many, would some one devote his 
whole attention, in a voyage for that 
purpose (which now could be easily 
accomplished) by going to Egypt and 
Nubia, for the sole end of bringing back | 
drawings of ail the local usages, house- 
hold utensils, agricultural instruments, 
and every article of dress, as well all 
ceremonial customs, and superstitious 
prejudices of the nations on the Nile. 
And who could have done this service 
to the curious so well as the late la- 
mented Belzoni? whose knowledge of 
this kind was as extensive, as his mo- 
desty in concealing it. 
Speaking one day to him of an oblong 
tablet, with four things like hooks ap- 
pearing under it, placed on the breast 
of the ns, or universal mind, on an 
image of it (from the Oxford, too long 
neglected, marble) in the form of a ser- 
28 2 5 pent 5 
