160 
DESCRIPTIONS OF £GYPT. 
feclipse 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 man- 
ners, and their laws, are forgotten, and their 
name has hardly survived the revolutions of cen- 
turies. The gr^rideiir 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 insigni- 
ficance the most boasted monuments of other nar 
tions. The ruins, which occupy both sides of the 
Nile, extend for three leagues along the river ; 
on the east a;nd west they reach to the mountains, 
and describe a circuit of twenty-seven miles, 
covered with prostrate columns of immense mag- 
nitude, colossal statues, lofty colonnades, avenues 
formed by rows of obelisks and sphinxes, and re^t 
ittains of porticos of prodigious elevation. Kour- 
na and Medinet-Abu on th^ western bank of the 
river, Luxor and Carnac on the eastern, mark 
the extent of the ruins, the greater proportion of 
which exist on the eastern bank of the Nile. 
The river is at this place about three hundred 
yards broad. At Kourna ^re the ruins of an 
Egyptian temple, constructed on a different plan 
from that of the edifices at Thebes.* The roofs 
* Ripaud's Report on the Antiquities of Upper Egypt, 
p. 48, 
