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high antiquity ; notwithstanding all the vicissitudes of the 
different governments whose yoke has been successively laid 
upon it ; whatever efforts different peoples have made to destroy 
it entirely, and to cause to disappear even its smallest vestiges, 
effacing even its lightest traces, transporting elsewhere the 
stones, and the materials of which it was constructed, mutilating 
the figures which adorned it ; finally, in spite of what 4,000 years 
and more have been able to add to so many causes of destruction, 
its ruins still offer to the eyes of spectators a combination 
of w'onders Avhich confound the mind, and which the most 
eloquent man would fail to do justice to in description. The 
longer one considers, the more admiration one feels inspired 
with ; and every new view that one takes of its ruins is a new 
cause of delight. Scarcely has it occasioned one idea to rise in 
the mind of the spectator when it suggests an idea still more 
admirable; and when we think to have attained a perfect 
knowledge of it, it convinces you at the same instant that what 
you have known is still much below the truth/’ 
A gigantic fist in the British Museum, weighing I know not 
how much, recalls the vastness of the architecture of the 
temple of Ptali. 
Memphis and its Temple. 
With the exception of Thebes, Memphis is the city concern- 
ing which the Egyptian texts give us the most information. 
It is thus that our Egyptologists are enabled to give us the 
most accurate information on points moi’e especially requisite 
to be known. 
In reference to this grand temple of Ptali, the first we must 
suppose of any importance in Egypt, what have we to imagine 
to ourselves, or what must be our conceptions ? Strange to 
say, it is the Deity under his character as Creator wdio was 
venerated in this temple. Ptah is called “the Father of 
Beginnings, the Creator of the egg of the sun and of the 
moon.” He is very distinctly characterized as “ the Father of 
all the gods,* the first existing”; he is, as his name implies, 
the Architect, the Former, the Constructor. t “ He is the 
Chief of the society of the gods, who has created the existences ; 
all things exist after that he exists. He is the Master of 
Truth and the king of the gods.” Another text engraven on 
the walls of the temple of Philse calls him, “ He who has 
created the beings, who has formed men and gods w r ith his own 
hands.” 
* Text at Phila?. 
f Text of Dendera ; see Brugsch, ] Jist., p. 21. 
