AND LOWER EGYPT. 187 



walls are incrustcd with marbles of various co- 

 lours, and there are still to be seen some beautiful 

 remains of mosaic work. 



The tomb, the object of our curiosity, and which 

 may be considered as one of the most beautiful 

 morsels of antiquity preserved in Egypt, had been 

 transformed, by the Mahometans, into a kind of 

 little pool, a reservoir consecrated to contain the 

 water for their pious ablutions. It is very large, 

 and would form an oblong rectangle, were not one 

 of the shorter sides rounded in shape of a bathing- 

 tub. It was probably, of old time, covered with a 

 lid : but no traces of it are now visible, and the 

 laver is entirely open. It is all of a single piece, 

 and of a superb marble spotted green, yellow, red- 

 dish, &c. on a ground of a beautiful black ; but 

 what renders it peculiarly interesting, is the pro- 

 digious quantity of small hieroglyphical characters 

 with which it is impressed both inside and out- 

 wardly. A month would scarcely be sufficient to 

 copy them faithfully : we have not hitherto, of 

 course, had exact drawings of them. That which 

 I saw, in my return from Egypt, in the possession 

 of the minister Berthin, at Paris, could only serve 

 to convey an idea of the form of the monument, 

 the hieroglyphics having been traced purely from 

 imagination, and as chance directed. It is nearly 

 the same thing as if, in trying to copy an inscrip- 

 tion, 



