2i8 TRAVELS IN UPPER 



other branches of agriculture with the ancient 

 Egyptians, rests on a fact not easily to be destroyed. 

 M. de Caylus, whom his taste for antiquities has 

 raised to celebrity, describes an idol of Osiris, in 

 bronze, which had been enclosed in a case of plas- 

 ter. In order to render the joinings of this case 

 more firm and solid, over a substance so smooth 

 as bronze, and without a hold in several places, 

 they had made use of the straw of rice, very easily 

 distinguishable* . M. Pauw, it is true, calls in 

 question the botanical knowledge of M. de Cay- 

 lus^, as U it required profound skill in the 

 science of plants, to be able to distinguish the 

 straw of rice from that of other farinaceous vege- 

 tables. Besides, the examination of this idol was 

 not made by M. de Caylus only ; M. de Bose de- 

 livered a dissertation, before the Academy of In- 

 scriptions and Belles- Lettres, in December 1739, 

 on the same figure of Osiris, gilded in a very- 

 singular manner, and which he had seen a short 

 time before, in the possession of the Count de 

 Caylus. They had both of them accurately exa- 

 mined the gilding which covered it, and had ob- 



* Collection of Antiquities, vol. i. p. 13, 14. See likewise 

 the Memoirs of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettre»- 

 of Paris, vol. xiv. p. 13. 



f Philosophical Researches respecting the Egyptians and 

 Chinese, vol. i. This pretended rice-straw, if M. Pauw is to 

 be credited, is nothing else but the stalks of millet cut down. 

 Note at bottom of p. 138. 



served. 



