129 



account, together with the author's general conclusions, form the 

 subject of this second part. 



The practical part of the whole inquiry has been conducted under 

 the immediate direction of Hekekyan Bey, an Armenian engineer 

 officer in the service of the Viceroy of Egypt ; and a brief biogra- 

 phical account of him is given, showing his eminent scientific quali- 

 fications for such researches. The author had the advantage of ob- 

 taining the zealous cooperation of our Consul-General in Egypt, the 

 Honourable Charles Augustus Murray, and his successor, the Honour- 

 able Frederick Bruce, on whose representations the late Viceroy 

 Abbas Pacha, and the present, not only gave a ready assent to the 

 undertaking, but, with a rare and most exemplary liberality, ordered 

 that the whole expense should be defrayed by the Egyptian Govern- 

 ment. 



As at Heliopolis the Obelisk is all that remains above ground of 

 that city, so, at Memphis, there is one solitary monument of its 

 former greatness, a fallen colossal statue of the great king Ra- 

 messes II., the Sesostris of the Greeks. All testimony appears to 

 concur in assigning the foundation of Memphis to Menes, the first 

 king of the first dynasty, who, according to Lepsius, began his reign 

 3892 years B.C. The same authority assigns the dates of 1394 to 

 1328 B.C. for the reign of Harnesses II. The site of Memphis pre- 

 sented therefore a peculiarly fit situation for prosecuting the inquiry, 

 by sinking pits to the greatest practicable depth near this colossal 

 statue, and around it. 



The surface of the ground, for some distance around the statue, 

 being uneven, it became necessary, in order to ascertain the variable 

 depth of water during an inundation, at the mouths of the pits, 

 intended to be sunk in various parts of the area, that the level of th'e 

 highest rise of the water over the ground at a given time should be 

 determined. This was done for the inundation of 1851, and it proved 

 to be somewhat above the 24th cubit mark of the Rhoda Nilometer, 

 a height of water which covers the entire surface of the valley, leaving 

 above it artificial elevations. The inequalities of the ground are 

 such, that in any section, under the 24th cubit level, the surface 

 varies from where it coincides with that level to nearly 20 feet in the 

 deepest part ; so that, while in one part of the district there might 

 be a depth of nearly 20 feet of turbid water, in another it might be 



VOL. IX. K 



