796 
corrupted appellations. 
monster by a subterranean passage, and that the priests resorted 
thither at certain times to pronounce their oracles, alleging that a 
hole, placed at the top of the sphinx's head, answered their purpose. 
It has, however, been found on examination, that this hole is only five 
feet deep, and communicates neither with the mouth, nor with the 
interior of the monster. 
The Arabs, inspired by Mahomet with a horror for all representa- 
tions of men and animals, have disfigured its face with arrows and 
lances. Some have urged, from the appearance of the countenance, 
that the Egyptians were black ; and that from the face of the sphinx 
resembling that of the negro, the similitude of the Egyptians may be 
inferred. The reasons, how'ever, on which this opinion rests, are 
insufficient to support the conclusion. The statues of the Nile, it is 
said, were made of black marble, in allusion to that river’s coming 
from Ethiopia. If this opinion be correct, perhaps the negro face 
might have been given to the sphinx for the same reason. It would 
hardly have been thought necessary to explain why the figure of the 
Nile was black, if the complexion of the natives had been generally 
acknowledged of the same tinge. 
The small statues of Isis, &c. frequently found among the ruins of 
Egypt, are far from resembling those of the negro. Similar observa- 
tions will apply to figures in alto-relievo and basso-relievo, on the 
walls of Thebes, and in the caverns of Gebel-el-Silsili. Of the colos- 
sal statues at Thebes, the features are too much damaged to be adduced 
in proof on either side. 
The learned Mr. Bryant, {Ancient Mythology vol. iii. p. 532,) 
observes, that the sphinx seems to have been originally a vast rock 
of different strata ; which, from a shapeless mass, the Egyptians 
fashioned into an object of beauty and veneration. The Egyptians 
first used this figure in their buildings; from them it passed to the 
Greeks, and other nations, who afterwards improved it into an elegant 
ornament. 
Corrupted Appellations. 
Nothing can be more foreign to the original meaning of many words 
and proper names, than their present appellations, frequently owing 
to the history of those things been forgotten, or an ignorance of the 
language in which they are expressed. Who, for instance, would 
suppose that the head of the French coast, near Calais, called hy 
our sea-men Blackness, could be so entitled from its French name of 
Blanc Nez, or the White Headland ? Henry VHI. having taken the 
town of Boulogne, in France, the gates of which he brought to Har- 
des in Kent, where they are still remaining, the flatterers of that 
reign highly magnified this action, which, like Porto-Bello, became a 
popular subject for signs ; and the port or harbour of Boidogne, 
called Boulogne Mouth, was accordingly set up at a noted inn in 
Holborn ; the name of the inn outliving the sign and fame of the 
conquest, an ignorant painter, employed by a no less ignorant land- 
lord to paint a new one, represented it by a bull and a large gaping 
human mqqth, answering to the vulgar pronunciation of Bull-and- 
Moutb . The same piece of history gave being to the Bull-and-Gate, 
