370 



EGYPT. 



account as far as it goes may be depended upon ; though had I been 

 able to make it fuller, it would no doubt have been better deserving 

 of a place in your edition of Abdallatif. 



Finding him in general pretty accurate you are unwilling to allow 

 your author to be mistaken in two circumstances, which at the same 

 time you do not know how to defend, as they have not been taken 

 notice of by other travellers. One of them is very remarkable, 

 namely, " that he saw a prodigious number of hieroglyphical 

 inscriptions on the two great pyramids, as many as if copied would 

 fill perhaps 10,000 volumes." I am at a loss what to say to this. 

 There is not now I believe a single hieroglyphic to be seen on either 

 of them, but it may not be amiss to observe that the greater part of 

 the outer stones or covering of the two large pyramids have been 

 destroyed or carried away. From some of the original covering still 

 remaining at the top of the second great one, it is more than 

 probable that the steps of which the sides of the other now consist, 

 were covered in the same manner, with stones of such a form as to 

 make a smooth surface from top to bottom with a profile somewhat 

 resembling this figure J ^HEB Among the pyramids of Sacara and 

 Dashour there is one on which the covering is still pretty entire. I 

 do not recollect finding a single inscription upon it. Whether there 

 be any on the covered part of the second pyramid of Giza, I 

 cannot say from my own knowledge, as I did not succeed in my 

 attempt to get up to it. I observed and copied two lines of hiero- 

 glyphics on a rock that is cut perpendicularly, near and opposite to 

 the north side of this pyramid. This is the only thing of the kind 

 I found in that neighbourhood, except in some grottoes or rooms cut 

 out in that part of the rocks facing the east, on which the 

 pyramids are built, and at no great distance from the largest. These 

 appear to have been the entrance of burying places, by the pits in 

 most of them being now rilled up, down which the mummies were 

 probably conveyed. The sides of the rooms are covered with 

 hieroglyphics, among which* I remember taking notice of human 

 figures, some of them about as large as life. 



