ENTRANCE TO THE CAVES OF BENI HASSAN. 
This portico to the catacombs is remarkable, as it probably illustrates the origin of 
the Doric order of the Greeks; at all events it shows that its principles existed among 
the ancient Egyptians at a very remote period, at least 1500 b.c., and, therefore, 
earlier than any known Greek temple. The columns have sixteen sides, and are 
slightly fluted: they are sixteen and a half feet high, and rather more than five 
diameters, with a slight lessening at the top, on which rests a small abacus. The 
proportions of the entablature and cornice, too, are remarkable, as being unlike the 
general architecture of Egypt. 
The great interest, however, in the remains at Beni Hassan, lies in the pictorial 
representations left by the ancient Egyptians on the walls of these catacombs. Rich 
as many of the temples are in the paintings and sculptured representations of the 
conquests by the Pharaohs, on the walls of the tombs of Beni Hassan the arts, habits, 
and pursuits of the Egyptians, in their social state, are painted. Here they are 
represented occupied in their various trades, as potters, - weavers, glass-blowers, jewellers, 
writers, statuaries, and painters; their sports are shown in dancing, music, wrestling 
in various attitudes, posturing and fencing, playing with balls and at chess, and the 
game of morra as among the Italians of our own day. The chase of wild animals, 
fowling and fishing; agricultural pursuits, planting, sowing, reaping, threshing, rearing 
cattle, and the management of herds and flocks; buffoons, and dwarfs, and schools 
for instruction. The caves of Beni Hassan have, in short, preserved the best, and 
in many cases the only information we possess, of the manners, pursuits, and customs 
of this extraordinary people. 
Roberts’s Journal. 
Wilkinson. 
