before it) during the Revolution; a column of wood during the Empire; which was 
removed at the Restoration, and arrangements made bj Louis XVIII. to replace Louis 
XV.; but an order of Charles X. substituted a statue of Louis XVI. This was not, 
however, carried into effect before the Government of the last Revolution adopted 
the Obelisk of Luxor. The traveller who now looks upon the ruins of the Temple 
feels a deep regret that the completeness of its glorious facade should have been 
destroyed to gratify such a frivolous national vanity. The French obtained leave from 
Mahommed Ali to remove it; and erected it, at enormous cost, in their capital. Cui 
bono ?—not to preserve it from destruction, not to commemorate a victory, or to mark 
an era in the history .of France; but it was removed from its place of honour, where 
it had stood for thirty-three centuries only to decorate, with the help of bronze and 
gilding, a spot in Paris which has been stained with a thousand crimes! 
Wilkinson’s Egypt and Thebes. Wathen’s Arts and Antiquities of Egypt. 
RUINS OF MAHARRAKA, NUBIA. 
The Hierasycaminon of many ancient writers. The Temple is an hypsethral structure, 
an oblong form surrounded by a colonnade. Of the sixteen original columns fourteen 
remain standing. The capitals are only roughly hewn; this, and the almost entire 
absence of sculpture, are evidence of its having been left, in common with nearly all 
the Nubian Temples, unfinished. Though small, it is beautiful in form, but is in so 
disjointed a state that its having held together so long is surprising, especially as 
there seems to have been no mortar employed in the building, the stones having been 
apparently secured by some sort of clamp that has decayed. On one of the walls is a 
rude representation of Isis seated under the sacred fig-tree , and there are other figures 
of the Roman period, of the time of the Csesai*s. A Greek ex-voto on one of the 
columns shows that the Temple was dedicated to Isis and Serapis. 
It has been used, like most of the Temples in Nubia, as a place of worship by 
the early Christians, before their conversion or expulsion by the Mahommedans. The 
Temple dates only from the lowest period of the Ptolemies and Caesars. 
Within a few paces to the eastward there appear the remains of a wall and traces 
of another Temple; there are vestiges, too, of the ancient town, but now so much 
concealed by the sand, which almost approaches the water’s edge, that it cannot be 
distinctly defined. 
Wilkinson’s Egypt and Thebes. 
Roberts’s Journal. 
