8 TRAVELS IN UPPER 



Egypt, that ancient cradle of ihe sciences, where 

 the wonders of art and those of nature contended 

 for the prize of admiration, has been the object of 

 philosophic excursion in ancient as in modern 

 times. From Herodotus * down to Volney, writers 

 of equal celebrity, the multiplied details respecting 

 a country, of which the surface of the whole globe 

 presentsno parallel, demonstrate the curiosity which 

 it generally excited. But this frequence of tra- 

 vellers cannot exclude my pretension to a place 

 among the rest, a*nd I am not to be deterred from 

 speaking of Egypt by the number or renown of 

 those vvho have trodden the ground before me. 

 Barbarism and ruins have succeeded to the institu- 

 tions and the monuments of antiquity ; and the 

 difficulty attending the prosecution of research, 

 and of making observations, has not permitted mo- 

 dern travellers to examine every thing. There re- 

 mained after them, as there will still remain after 

 me, many objects, if not to be seen, at least to be 

 seen well. Besides, objects do not present them- 

 selves to all observers under the same point of view. 



* M. Sonnini might have produced an authority at least as 

 respectable as that of Herodotus, and of still higher antiquity. 

 To Moses, the lawgiver of the Hebrews, mankind is indebted 

 for the earliest, most authentic and most interesting memoirs of 

 ancient Egypt, and he knew the country much better than 

 any traveller who has written since his time. But a reference 

 to Scripture would have degraded and sullied the pure and 

 philosophic page of a French republican. — H. H. 



And 



