168 
DESCRIPTIONS OF EGYPT. 
red granite. * In the least decorated caverns, are 
represented the arts which flourished, and the 
trades which were practised, at the epocha of their 
construction. The subjects which relate to funeral 
ceremonies, the occupations of the hunter and the 
fisher, the duties and the punishments of military 
life, the employments of the husbandman, the pot- 
ter, and the artizans which first appear in the pro- 
gress of civilization, are in these caverns sculptured 
in basso-relievo, or painted in fresco, t The sepul- 
chres of the kings are carved, in their whole ex- 
tent, with pictures and hieroglyphics, and exhibit 
many specimens of the grotesque style, similar to 
that employed in Herculaneum. t The unintellir 
* Browne's Travels, p. 137. 
f Ripaud's Report on the Antiquities of Upper Egypt, 
p. 44-. 
f "In some places of the Mummy Pits," says Vansleb, 
" are great tombstones, full of cyphers and enigmatical fi« 
" gures, which represent something of chemistry, and of 
" other sciences and mysteries, and full of strange charac- 
" ters that are no hieroglyphics.''- — - Vansleb 's Travels in 
1672-3, p. §t 
The sepulchres of the kings are denominated Biban-el- 
Mohik, the Ports or Gates of the Kings ; and hence Bruce 
thinks was derived the epithet Ixaro/i'TrvXog, having a hundred 
gates, which is employed by Homer. Volney conjectures, that 
the term signified a hundred public porticoes. Bruce's Tra- 
vels, Vol. I. p. 1 36. Volney 's Ruins, 
