HERODOTUS AND EGYPTIAN GEOLOGY. 59 



Ethiopia (alias red gi-anite) lias been employed. Some of 

 the monuments have always remained in situ close to the 

 rock whence they were hewn, notably about the largest 

 obelisk of all, still lying prostrate in the time honoured 

 qnarries of Assouan for some unexplained cause, either a 

 flaw in the stone, or from the reverses or death of the 

 monarch who ordered its construction. The real reason 

 will now never be certainly known. Other colossal busts, 

 statues, obelisks, sarcophagi, linings of corridors, &c., &c., 

 still adorn such ancient sites as Karnak, Luxor, Rameseum, 

 Memphis, Mitraheniiy, Geezeh, Heliopolis, vfcc. Other relics 

 of red granite, and of sandstone as well, have long since 

 been removed far away, and now adorn the proudest 

 capitals of Europe, as London, Paris, Rome, and even 

 transatlantic cities as New York. And the Thames Embank- 

 ment, the Place de la Concorde, the Piazza of St. Peter's, the 

 Mosque of St. Sophia, Constantinople, and other public 

 places in the last named city alike testify to the presence of 

 the spoils of the East, and in the transfer of right ancient 

 monuments from the land of bondage to captivity itself led 

 captive. 



Why red granite should have been so extensively chosen 

 in preference to blue, when stone of the latter tint likewise 

 so plentifully occurs in Syene, Philse, Kalabsheh, it is hard 

 perhaps to say. My own idea is that the effect of the rosy 

 surface when lighted up by the warm glow of the rising 

 sun in the eastern heaven, especially in the case of such 

 edifices as were erected on the west bank of the Nile, or on 

 the plateau of the Pyramids, likewise on the Libyan shore 

 of the great river, was one calculated to excite great admi- 

 ration on the part of the procession of monarch, white robed 

 priests, and people Avinding up in solemn procession to the 

 carefully modulated and plaintive strain of flute and of sistrum 

 from the valley of the Nile beneath. That the red granite 

 should have been selected for incised hieroglyphics instead 

 of sandstone is by no means hard to perceive when regard 

 is paid not only to the particular hue, but to the durability 

 of the material. 



The structures along the Ethiopian Nile, wherein friable 

 sandstone is, as a rule, more frequently made use of than in 

 Egypt proper for the rough and ill-executed, and not 

 unfrequently coarsely designed, carvings afibrd striking 

 evidence of the comparative inutility of that stone to resist 

 the efi'ects of the weatlier, as well as of tempiis edax rerum. 



¥ 2 



