1 fon I have it engraved on the fame plate with the Elephanta fculptures, representing the deities of India with their refpective attributes. "Two lions of white marble, thicker than horfes, in half relief, are fculptured on this wall. Hence I paffed along the other fide, which is likewife full of bas-reliefs, and hath two lions as large, and fituate like the former, at the distance of about 300 paces, till at length I came to the grand front of this ftately fabric. Here I faw a vestibule, in the middle of the front, fupported by vast square pilafters. A magnificent periftyle, fupported by three rows of columns, which eight men together could fcarcely embrace, extends itfelf on both fides the veftibule, and fupports a flat roof made of ftones fix or feven feet broad, and of an extraordinary length. The ceiling of this roof was once painted; for, there ftill remain ftrong marks of the colours. The columns are made of vaft maffes of granite marble, and charged with hieroglyphics in bas-relief; each has its chapiter, compofed of four women's heads, with their head-drefs, placed back to back, fo that the four faces appear like those of Janus.' They are, doubtless, the four heads of ISIS OMNIA, alluding, like the four heads of Brahma, who is is ALL THAT IS, AND ALL THAT EVER WAS, to the four elements, and the four quarters of the world. M. Lucas proceeds ; "Thefe heads are of a fize proportionate to the thicknefs of the columns. Upon them there refis a fquare bafe, made of one ftone, about fix feet high, rather longer than represented on the plate, illustrative of this ruin. A kind of cornice of a fingular, but not inelegant, fafhion runs all along this periftyle, and terminates what remains of this palace. There are, over the middle portico, two large dragons, folded together, and refting their heads on vaft wings ftretched out on both fides of them. Although thefe columns are fo deeply buried in the ruins that only one half of them appears, yet we may judge of their height by their circumference; and, according to the exact rules of architecture, their fhafts were fifty-five or fixty feet high, and the whole columns, with the chapiter and bafe, above one hundred." The ornament, which our author describes on the front of the portico, and which invariably decorates that of all the Egyptian temples, is the celebrated Hemptha, or Egyptian Trinity; for, he might have added, that in the middle of it was the ORB, or GLOBE, out of which the ferpents and the wings proceed. I have obferved before, that, by the dragon, the ancients only meant a large ferpent. Lucas feems to have been mifled, by the wings that fhadow them, to call them dragons; but the wings, in fact, iffue with the ferpents from the central orb. Before we entirely quit Luxore for the regions nearer the fource of the Nile, there is one circumstance peculiarly deferving of confideration, and which has attracted the notice as well of M. Lucas as of a late very celebrated investigator of Egyptian antiquities, M. De Pauw. The reader may remember that the artist, employed by Governor Boon to take copies of the fculptures at Salfette, plainly traced on many of the ftatues the paint and gilding with which they were anciently decorated. The fame fpecies of decoration is still more confpicuously visible on the temples and ftatues of Thebes, and thefe united circumstances remarkably corroborate the conjecture offered towards the clofe of the firft part of the preceding volume of Differtations, that they are only relics of ancient Chaldæan idolatry, the idols of which appear, from the picturefque description of them there cited from Ezekiel, to have been fculptured and adorned in a manner strikingly fimilar. fimilar. M. De Pauw, in his treatise entitled Recherches Philofophiques fur les Egyptiens et les Chinois, is of opinion that the art of painting flourished in Upper Egypt in high perfection in very remote æras, and that, from the strong remaining traits of the vivid colouring, it is evident that they muft have understood the art of making their colours brilliant and durable in a manner unknown to their pofterity. 66 1 As we afcend ftill higher that rich magazine of buried treasures, the Thebais of Egypt, in queft of a few other remarkable antiquities, more immediately connected with our subject, and as we pafs along the winding fhore of the Nile, let us not forget that, like the Ganges, its waves are HALLOWED by the superftitious natives. They call the Nile, fays Mr. Volney, holy, bleffed, facred; and, on appearance of every fresh inundation, that is, on the opening of the canals, mothers are feen plunging their children into the ftream, from a belief that these waters have a purifying and divine virtue."* The Ganges, we have obferved from the Ayeen Akbery, flows from the hair of Veefhnu ; and the Nile is faid, in the often-cited treatise the Volney's Travels in Egypt and Syria, vol. i. p. 19. |