EUINS OF THEBES. 
165 
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 husband- 
man, the potter, and the artisans which first ap- 
pear in the progress of civilization, are in these 
caverns sculptured in basso-relievo, or painted in 
fresco.* The sepulchres of the kings are carved, 
in their whole extent, with pictures and hiero- 
glyphics, and exhibit many specimens of the gro- 
tesque style similar to that employed in Herculane- 
um.t The unintelligible characters inscribed on 
the walls of these caverns, are supposed to conceal 
the history of a very obscure period of the reign 
of the ancient Theban monarchs, whose authority 
extended from Ethiopia to India. In one of 
* Ripaud's Report on the Antiquities of Upper Egypt, 
p. 4?4'. 
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."— Faws/e^'^ Travels in 
1672-3,^. 91. 
The sepulchres of the kings are denominated Biban-el- 
Moluk, the Ports or Gates of the Kings ; and hence, Bruce 
thinks, was derived the epithet Ixxro^TryAo?, 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. 136. Volney 's Ruins. 
