DESCRIPTIONS OF EGYPT. 
invited Darius to follow them to the tombs of their 
ancestors, we accompany their dreary route through 
the desert, and contemplate the solemn visit of the 
pastoral tribes to the venerable graves of their fa- 
thers. It is with feelings such as these the travel- 
ler should tread on the ruins of Thebes, and con- 
template the cradle of the human race. If ever a 
nation aimed at immortality of fame, and sought to 
astonish and eclipse succeeding generations by the 
monuments of their grandeur, it was the nation 
which built Egyptian Thebes ; yet their antiquity 
is buried in the obscurity of ages ; their history, 
their manners, and their laws, are forgotten, and 
their name has hardly survived the revolutions of 
centuries. The grandeur and beauty conspicuous 
in the venerable ruins of this ancient city, the enor- 
mous dimensions, and the gigantic proportions of 
its architecture, reduce into comparative insignifi- 
cance the most boasted monuments of other nations. 
The ruins, which occupy both sides of the Nile, 
extend for three leagues along the river ; on the 
east and west, they reach to the mountains, and de- 
scribe a circuit of twenty-seven miles, covered with 
prostrate columns of immense magnitude, colossal 
statues, lofty colonnades, avenues formed by rows of 
obelisks and sphinxes, and remains of porticos of 
prodigious elevation. Kourna and Medinet-Abu, 
on the western bank of the river, Luxor and Car- 
nac, on the eastern, mark the extent of the ruins, 
