10 ARCHITECTURE. 
this was another smaller statue, likewise in a sitting position, which, according — 
to Diodorus Siculus, represented the mother of Osymandias. The second 
peristyle of the building contains columns of 35 feet 9 inches in height, by 
7 feet 6 inches diameter, modelled in a higher style than those in the palace 
of Sesostris, though the latter was built 800 years after the former. In the 
second court was a statue of black granite, with a beautiful rose-colored. 
granite head, all in one piece 22 feet high. The head is at present in the 
British Museum. The bas-reliefs on the exterior walls represent battle-scenes, 
war-chariots, and attacks upon the enemy’s position, who retreats swimming - 
to his reserve on the opposite bank of a river. 
Besides the monuments on the left bank of the Nile already mentioned, 
there were about forty royal tombs, catacombs, or hypogea, only twelve 
of which can be entered at the present day. They were rock-cut, and are 
highly interesting on account of their bas-reliefs and fresco paintings. The 
tombs themselves are generally ranged in different tiers, one above the 
other; the lowest are usually the most elegant, while those in the upper 
tiers are very plain. PJ. 5, fig. 12, shows a ground-plan of one of the 
largest. In front of the entrance are large fore-courts, which communicate 
by galleries with the extensive apartments, the largest of which is about 
600 feet long, entirely rock-cut. The walls and ceilings are decorated with 
sculpture-work and fresco paintings, representing vases, furniture, musical 
instruments (flutes, harps, lyres, &c.) of the most elegant forms, girls dancing 
to the music of the harp, hunting and fishing scenes, rural occupations, 
naval scenes, vintage, weighing of goods, a large dinner party seated at a 
well supplied table, and a court of death. One of the catacombs contains 
a representation of a royal throne, which most minutely corresponds with 
the description of that of king Solomon given in 1 Kings x. 19, 20, which was 
therefore in all likelihood copied from the Egyptian throne. On one of the 
ceilings a zodiac is painted, by the position of the sun in which it is inferred 
that the temple was built 1700 years before Christ. Some of the catacombs 
contain fragments of arches. Atthe present time they are almost destroyed, 
and the mummies, divested of their coffins, he mingled promiscuously 
together. 
It seems to be not out of place here to correct a very prevalent error 
respecting the art of fresco painting. The term fresco painting, an ancient 
Egyptian invention, meansa painting produced by a chemical preparation 
of the mortar before and at the time of putting it on the walls, so that it 
may be affected neither by atmospheric influence nor time, and that the 
painting executed ages ago may appear as fresh in color and as correct in 
outline as if done but yesterday. It has nothing at all to do with the object 
represented or with the beauty of the design, as shown by the great variety in 
the above mentioned representations. The art of fresco painting is entirely lost 
to the moderns, and the attempts made in different parts of Europe to rediscover 
it, sometimes at extrayagant outlay, particularly in Munich and in Berlin, 
have, after several years’ experiments, turned out entire failures. It is either 
simply ridiculous and a proof of ignorance, or an intentional fraud on the 
public, to dignify by the name of fresco the common water color or oil 
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