1 64 EGYPT. 



Egypt are the most stupendous, and, to appearance, the most useless 

 structures that ever were raised by the hands of men. 



The catacombs, or mummy-pits, so called from their contaning the 

 mummies, or embalmed bodies of the ancient Egyptians, are subter- 

 raneous vaults of a prodigious extent ; but the art of preparing the 

 mummies is now lost. It is said, that some of the bodies thus em- 

 balmed are perfect and distinct at this day, though buried 3000 years 

 ago. The labyrinth in Upper Egypt is a curiosity thought to be 

 more wonderful than the pyramids themselves. It is partly under- 

 ground, and cut out of a marble rock, consisting, it is said, anciently, 

 of twelve palaces or halls, and 3000 chambers, the intricacies of which 

 occasion its name. The lake Moeris was dug by the order of an 

 Egyptian king, to correct the irregularities of the Nile, and to com- 

 municate with that river, by canals and ditches, which still subsist, 

 and are evidences of the utility, as well as grandeur, of the work. 

 Wonderful yrottos and excavations, mostly artificial, abound in Egypt. 

 The whole country towards Grand Cairo is a continued scene of an- 

 tiquities, of which the oldest are the most stupendous, but the more 

 modern the most beautiful. Cleopatra's needle, and its sculptures, 

 are admirable. Pompey's pillar is a fine regular column of the 

 Corinthian order, the shaft of which is one stone, being eighty-eight 

 feet nine inches in height, or ten diameters of the column ; the whole 

 height is 1 14 feet, including the capital and the pedestal. The Sphinx, 

 as it is called, is no more than the head and part of the shoulders of a 

 woman, hewn out of the rock, and about thirty feet high, near one of 

 the pyramids. In many places, not only temples, but the walls of 

 cities, built before the time of Alexander the Great, are still entire, 

 and many of their ornaments, particularly the colour of their paint- 

 ings, are as fresh and vivid as when first laid on. 



History. ...It is generally agreed, that the princes of the line of the 

 Pharaohs sat on the throne of Egypt, in an uninterrupted succession, 

 till Cambyses, king of Persia, conquered the Egyptians, 520 years 

 before the birth of Christ ; and that in the reign of these princes, 

 those wonderous structures, the pyramids, were raised, which cannot 

 be viewed without astonishment. Egypt continued a part of the 

 Persian empire, till Alexander the Great vanquished Darius, when it 

 fell under the dominion of that prince, who soon after built the cele- 

 brated city of Alexandria. The conquests of Alexander, who died in 

 the prime of life, being seized upon by his generals, the province of 

 Egypt fell to the share of Ptolemy, by some supposed to have been a 

 half brother of Alexander, when it again became an independent 

 kingdom, about 300 years before Christ. His successors, who some- 

 times extended their dominions over great part of Syria, ever after 

 retained the name of Ptolemies, and in that line Egypt continued be- 

 tween two and three hundred years, till the famous Cleopatra, the 

 wife and sister of Ptolemy Dionysius, the last king, ascended the 

 throne. After the death of Cleopatra, who had been mistress suc- 

 cessively to Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, Egypt became a Roman 

 province, and thus remained till the reign of Omar, the second caliph 

 of the successors of Mahommed, who expelled the Romans after it 

 had been in their hands 700 years. The famous library of Alexandria, 

 said to consist of 700,000 volumes, was collected by Ptolemy Phila- 

 delphus, son of the first Ptolemy : and the same prince caused the 

 Old Testament to be translated into Greek ; which translation is 

 known by the name of the Septuagint. About the time of the cm- 



