452 Notices respecting New. Books. 
would in itself be a curiosity; but when it is considered that so, 
much pains have been used in the elaborate carving of so fragile 
a material, it almost surpasses belief. It is made something in 
the form of a human body, but the sides, of it are not above 2% 
inches thick, all deeply carved in miniature figures representing 
triumphs, processions, sacrifices, &c.. All these figures are stained 
in the deepest blue; and when a light is placed in the inside, the 
alabaster being transparent, they appear upon a pellucid ground. 
It was found in what Mr. Belzoni supposes to be a tomb of the 
god Apis, and was most unaccountably placed across the top, of a 
hollow passage (which leads 300 feet beyond, into the solid rock, 
and has not yet been explored to the utmost) with not above one 
inch resting on one of the sides, so that, had it slipped, it would 
have fallen and been shattered to pieces. 
“¢ We visited the court-yard which I had passed through last 
night, and surveyed four statues of black granite as large as life, 
with women’s bodies and heads of livns.. They are in a sitting 
posture, with the emblematical key of the Nile in one of their 
hands. Belzoni discovered these, with about thirty others, deep 
under the sand. ‘They had been deposited there without regu- 
larity, as if to be concealed. Two of these he had sold to the 
Comte de Forbin for the French Museum. Mr. Salt next drew 
my attention to two wooden figures as large as life, found at 
Thebes in a standing position. They were covered with a sort 
of varnish, and had their eyes and part of their bodies inlaid with 
some metal,” 
On the 10th of March 1815, the author set off with Messrs. 
Salt and Belzoni to view the Pyramids, He pays a just tribute 
to Captain Caviglia, who so successfully explored. the well as it 
used to be called in the great pyramid; to him and Mr. Salt, in 
laying open the front of the sphynx; and to Belzoni, of whose ~ 
labours in opening the second pyramid he gives some particulars. 
*¢ At a distance were Arabs employed on the third pyramid, by 
Belzoni; and certainly, if we may judge from his former success 
at Thebes, and the second pyramid, it is to be hoped he will not 
labour in vain.” 
‘¢ We proceeded (says the author) to the buildings of masonry 
situated to the west of the great pyramid. The paintings in the 
interior of one of these are particularly curious, representing, 
among other things, the mode by which large stones were trans- 
ported both by land and water. In the former of these the stone 
is placed on a sledge drawn by bullocks with collars, which at 
the present period are not used in the country. Figures of per- 
sons ploughing, driving herds of cattle, fishing, in several in- 
stances cooking immense quantities of provisions, and in one de- 
sign, an uncommonly spirited fight in boats, in which the wea- 
pon 
