huts and houses of the Fellahs and other inhabitants, which constitute the modern 
town of Thebes: among these are many Christians. Our holy religion was early 
established here from Ethiopia, and extirpated by the Moslem: the nucleus of a restoration 
may yet be found in the hundred families of Coptic Christians, who inhabit Luxor 
and have their place of worship four miles distant, on the borders of the Arabian 
Desert, where its services are administered by four priests. The Moslem inhabitants 
live in wretched huts, about twelve feet square, amidst filth and vermin: they are 
wretches who are said to have little enjoyment of life except what they derive from 
interrupting the enjoyment of others. 
Luxor still holds the rank of a market town; it is the residence of a kashef, and 
the head-quarters of a troop of Turkish cavalry. 
Bonomi’s Notes. Wilkinson’s Egypt and Thebes. 
SIDE VIEW OF THE GREAT SPHINX. 
The mutilated state of this enormous figure is, perhaps, more strikingly observed in 
profile than in front. Here, too, as only one of the Pyramids, that of Cheops, is 
seen in the back-ground, more undisturbed possession of its solitude is left to the 
Great Sphinx, the most extraordinary of the productions of man in this land of his 
wonders. After drawing and studying it, Mr. Roberts said that he had had more 
powerful emotions excited by it than by the Pyramids. Wathen says, that, on emerging 
from the gloomy interior of the Third Pyramid, instead of the blaze of Egyptian day 
which he had left when he entered it, he found a cool and delicious moonlight evening; 
and walking towards the tent where he was to take up his abode for the night, he 
discovered hard by a large black object, standing out in strong relief, apparently a 
circular temple of moderate dimensions. This temple proved to be the enormous head 
of the celebrated Sphinx. 
Many conjectures have been offered upon the origin of this monster: the zodiacal 
signs of Leo and Virgo blended have been vaguely supposed to relate to something 
astronomical, to which most Egyptian mysteries are referred, but this explains nothing; 
others represent it as an union of the intellectual and physical forces, but enough 
remains to us of the wisdom of the Egyptians to prove that they knew that knowledge 
alone was power. That the Sphinx was worshipped, there is no doubt; an altar 
was found before the Temple, erected between its paws. 
