LIBYAN CHAIN OF MOUNTAINS, FROM THE TEMPLE OF 
LUXOR. 
This interesting scene is presented from the architrave of the colonnade which surrounds 
the great court of the Temple, to which Mr. Roberts had climbed in order to obtain 
a view of the plain of Thebes from the western bank of the Nile to the Libyan 
Mountains—a view which extends from the ruins of Medinet-Abou to those of the 
Temple of Amun at Goorna. 
The plain of Thebes is divided by the Nile, which, in its course, leaves on its 
right bank not only the vast ruins of the palace-temples of Luxor and of Karnak, but 
traces of the ancient greatness and extent of the city of Thebes or Diospolis, in 
numerous fragments of columns and colossal statues in situ, of vast inclosures, and 
heaps formed by the ruins of early structures. Those are not, however, seen in the 
direction of the Libyan chain, but the western plain, in the view, exhibits abundant evi¬ 
dence of the remote past, in the ruins of the Memnonium, the Temples of Medinet-Abou, 
and at Goorna; and here, too, are seen the colossal statues of Damy and Shamy, 
where they • have been thus seated during three thousand annual inundations of the 
fertilising Nile. Boats are seen on the river, that have brought to this scene of 
desolation travellers from a country which was probably uninhabited at the time when 
these temples had already passed through many ages of decay, from that greatness,, 
which their ruins attest to have once been the most gorgeous and imposing ever 
raised by the riches and power of a people. Now, how utterly degraded and sunk 
are those who inhabit the same spot: a few hundred miserable Fellahs burrow amidst 
the wondrous ruins of a city which once sent forth its hundreds of thousands to conquest! 
But the foul religion and idolatries practised by the Pharaohs and their subjects 
were followed by the vengeance of Heaven, threatened in the predictions of the Prophets 
of Israel. Idolatry became the cause of the civil wars which brought desolation on 
Egypt; the people of different nomes, or districts, fought against each other, and city 
set itself against city, in hatred or jealousy of the worship of a different animal or 
object. The prophecies of Isaiah were literally fulfilled; and the judgments threatened 
quickly followed the predictions of Ezekiel, which were fearfully executed in the 
conquest of Egypt, and the cruelties inflicted on her people, by Cambyses. The 
later prophecies of Holy Writ apply, however, more especially to the cities of Lower 
Egypt, which, at that time, had not only thrown off allegiance to the kings of Thebes, 
but this city had itself been conquered from the descendants of Remeses, a thousand 
years before the Christian era, by the Pharaoh Shishak (1 Kings, xi. 40), who governed 
the country in Bubastes, a city of Lower Egypt: it was his daughter who became 
the wife of King Solomon, and was the beloved object of his Song. The history of 
the decline of power in Thebes and its race of Pharaohs is so obscure, that the date 
cannot be fixed when it ceased to be the capital of Egypt: such records were probably 
