248 



PHYSICAL HISTORY OF MAN. 



think placed the stone here?" His reply, coming from an unexpected 

 source, startled me ; " Pharoon." 



Richly carved capitals and columns, some of marble, some of po- 

 lished porphyry, and some of granite, had been here and there dug 

 out of the ground ; abundantly vindicating the splendour of the ancient 

 Grecian city ; and I occasionally remarked a fragment, which had 

 proved too massive to be of use to modern Egyptian architects. My 

 Barabra guide, pointed out these various antique relics, referring them 

 always to " Sooltan Iskander;" and only in a single instance, did I 

 find him at fault; in that of the unmeaning Roman column, which 

 he persisted in attributing to Pharoon. On a subsequent occasion,, 

 the accuracy of the popular tradition was most unexpected ; for Ali 

 declared, that "he did not know the builder of the Pyramids, who, 

 however, was certainly not Pharoon." 



On the 20th of December, I started for Cairo in the steamboat, by 

 canal and river. Owing principally to the groves of date-palms 

 planted around the villages, the character of the scenery is rather 

 Indian than European. In ancient times, the people of the Medi- 

 terranean, knew of the Tropics only by the valley of the Nile ; which, 

 notwithstanding its two foreign palms, affords but a very slight in- 

 sight. At Cairo, 1 had the good fortune to meet with Mr. Bonomi, 

 and I was thus at once initiated into the subject of the Egyptian 

 antiquities. 



I visited the Pyramids, placed like a rock in the current of time; 

 a spot where the mind is directed to the roll of empires. I witnessed 

 the perfection of masonry in the workmanship around the entrance 

 of the great Pyramid ; and the fact also, that the principle of the 

 arch, is carried out in a neighbouring coeval tomb. While at Sac- 

 cara, the beauty of the sculptures in a tomb of the Sixth Dynasty, 

 seemed to justify Herodotus in his exalted commendation of the 

 Labyrinth. 



Of human works, the most ancient not only promise to endure 

 the longest, but they bear the impress of superior skill, and of 

 extreme purity of taste. And the decline of art in Egypt, is clearly 

 referable to the Pharaonic ages ; to the accession of the Eighteenth 

 Dynasty. A point of higher interest, is the fact, that the earliest 

 Egyptian monuments appear to have preceded the origin of idola- 

 try: but this question, with many others relating to the same period, 

 may probably be decided by the researches of Lepsius. 



