Il6 ON" THE CITY OF PEGUE, AND TKE 



Golden Supreme. This extraordinary edifice is built on 

 a double terrace, one raifed upon another. The lower 

 and oreater terrace is about ten feet above the natural 

 levcl'of the ground. It is quadrangular. The upper 

 and leiler terrace is of a like fliape, raifed about twenty- 

 feet above the lower terrace, or thirty above the level 

 of the country. I judged a fide of the lower terrace to 

 be 139 1 feet, of the upper 684. The walls that fuf- 

 tained the fides of the terraces, both upper and fewer, 

 are in a (rate of ruin. They were formerly covered with 

 plainer, wrought into various figures. The area of the 

 lower is ftrewed with the fragments of final 1 decayed 

 buildings ; but the upper is kept free from filth, and 

 in tolerable good order. There is a ftrong preemp- 

 tion that the fortrefs is coeval with this building 5 as 

 the earth of which the terraces are compofed, appears 

 to have been taken from the ditch ; there being no 

 other excavation in the city, or its neighbourhood, that 

 could have afforded a tenth part of the quantity. 



Thefe terraces are afcended by flights of (tone fteps, 

 broken and neglected. On each fide are dwellings of 

 the RahaanSy or priefts, raifed on timbers four or five 

 feet from the ground. Their houfes confift only of a 

 iingle hall. The wooden pillars that fupport them are 

 turned with nea'tnefs. The roof is of tile, and the 

 fides of fheathing-boards. There are a number of bare 

 benches in every houfe, on which the Rahaans deep. 

 We faw no furniture. 



Shoemadoo is a pyramid, compofed of brick and 

 plaifter, with fine fhell mortar, without excavation or 



aperture 



adored the Sun, before it received the allegorical appellation of 

 Oliris. or Author of lime. They likewife conferred it on their 

 kin^s and priefts. In the firft book of Moses, chap. xli. Pha- 

 r a 011 gives u Joseph to wife the daughter of Potiphera, or the 

 Fried of On." In the book of Jeremiah, a king of Egypt is ftyled, 

 « Pharaoh Ophra.'' And it is not a very improbable conjec- 

 ture, that the title Pharaoh, given to luccclTive kings of E 

 is a corruption of the word Phra, or Praw ; in its original ienfe 

 f'Tnifyin? the Saw, .and applied to the fovereign and the prieil- 

 hood, as the reprefentatives on earth of that fplendid luminary. 



