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ABYDUS. 
height was twenty-two feet. Girls and women were allowed to 
ascend the basement, which was one hundred and twenty-five feet in 
circumference. The people of Elis sacrificed daily, and private per- 
sons as often as they chose. 
'Abydus. 
Abydus is a town in Egypt, famous for the palace of Memnon, 
and the temple of Osiris, and inhabited by a colony of Milesians. 
It was the only one in the country, into which the singers and dancers 
were forbidden to enter. This city, reduced to a village under the 
empire of Augustus, now presents to our view only a heap of ruins, 
without inhabitants ; but to the west of these ruins is still found the 
celebrated tomb of Ismandes. The entrance is under a portico, sixty 
feet high, and supported by two rows of massy columns. The im- 
moveable solidity of the edifice, the huge masses which compose it, 
the hieroglyphics it is loaded with, stamp it a work of the ancient 
Egyptians. 
Beyond it is a temple three hundred feet long, and one hundred 
and fifty-five wide. Upon entering the monument, we meet with an 
immense hall, the roof of which is supported by twenty-eight columns, 
sixty feet high, and nineteen in circumference at the base ; they 
are twelve feet distant from each other. The enormous stones that 
form the ceiling, perfectly joined and incrusted as if they were one, pre- 
sented to the eye nothing but one solid platform of marble, one hun- 
dred and twenty-six feet long, and twenty-six feet wide. The walls 
are covered with hieroglyphics. One sees there a number of animals, 
birds, and human figures, with pointed caps on their heads, and a 
piece of stuff hanging down behind, and dressed in loose robes that 
come down only to the waist. The sculpture, however, is clumsy ; 
the forms of the body, the attitudes and proportions of the members, 
ill observed. Amongst these we may distinguish some women suck- 
ling their children, and men presenting offerings to them. Here also 
we meet with the divinities of India. 
Monsieur Chevalier, formerly governor of Chandenagore, who 
resided twenty years in that country, carefully visited the monu- 
ment on his return from Bengal. He remarked here the gods Jug- 
gernaut, Gonez, and Vechnou or Wistnou, such as they are repre- 
sented in the temples of Indostan. A great gate opens at the bottom 
of the first hall, which leads to an apartment forty-six feet long, by 
twenty-two wide. Six square pillars support the roof of it, and at 
the angles are the doors of four other chambers, but so choked up 
with rubbish, that they cannot now be entered. The last hall, sixty- 
four feet long by twenty-four wide, has stairs by which one descends 
into the subterraneous apartments of this grand edifice. The Arabs, 
in searching after treasure, have piled up heaps of earth and rubbish. 
In the part we were able to penetrate, sculpture and hieroglyphics are 
discoverable, as in the upper story. The natives say that they cor- 
respond exactly with those above ground, and that the columns are 
as deep in the earth, as they are lofty above ground. It would be 
dangerous to go far into these vaults ; for the air of them is so loaded 
