AND LOWER EGYPT. II9 



are an inexhaustible quarry of pieces of granite 

 and marble, which the Alexandrians of to-day are 

 dishonouring, by employing them in common 

 with ordinary materials, in the construction of 

 their dwellings and other common edifices. Very 

 superficial digging in the site of this palace fur- 

 nished, more abundantly than elsewhere, medals 

 and engraved stones : they had become rarer, and 

 indeed were hardly to be found at all, when I was 

 at Alexandria. From those ruins too was extracted 

 the fossile grinding tooth, represented in the size of 

 nature, plate II. It passed for a human tooth, and 

 consequently that of a giant. But this opinion is in- 

 admissible by every one who has the slightest know- 

 ledge of anatomy. On comparing this tooth with 

 those of known animals, there is a complete con- 

 viction that it must have belonged to an elephant. 



As you go out of the enclosure of the Arabs, by 

 the gate of the south, the eye is struck with one 

 of the most astonishing monuments which anti- 

 quity has transmitted to us. Proud of not having 

 sunk under the wastes of time, nor under the 

 more prompt and terrible attacks of superstitious 

 ignorance, rears its majestic head, the grandest 

 column that ever existed. (See figure 2, of plate 

 I.) It is of the most beautiful and the hardest 

 granite, and is composed of three pieces, out of 

 which have been cut the capital, the shaft, and the 



1 4 pedestal. 



