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dow where the kings and queens have leaned and gazed out, on so many a bright sunset evening, over this plain. How it annihilates three thousand years to stand here, in this royal palace! The oriel window in Kenilworth, where Leicester used to gaze on the plain—that seems old; so does the Botirg Schloss castle and its window of a German baron, on the mount above Baden. But here! in the palace of a Pharaoh! to see his love scenes, his domestic scenes, his portraits! It is a tribute to the eternity of art,

"For the artist never dies."

The floor is broken down, but you can distinguish where the second story is, where this chamber stood, with its window. Others of the chambers are uninjured.

The fallen pillars strewn through the wide and beautiful courts; their capitals, of the highest architectural beauty, covered with sculpture and polished; the grandeur of its passages, colonnades, battle scenes; and the ancient palace temple of Pharaoh, attract you. But still I was ever called back to the palace residence of Rameses Meiamoum, whose painted ceiling, of an azure ground, was studded by golden stars, almost as fresh as Roman Dendera. The distinctness of the sculptures, the warlike deeds of this descendant of Sesostris, please you. True, the ram-headed deity, Ammon Ra, the first of the Theban triad at the gateway, detracts from the beauty of the effect, (upon which Mrs. Romer dilates;) but who could not, like her, forget it in the sculptures and processions, so well preserved and so old?

Medinet Habou has a Christian temple in Greek style within its walls; but what is even that, with its Greek columns, to the testimonies on its walls in favor of Scripture truth? The battle scenes go round the whole, fully answering Richardson's and Condor's descriptions, which were my guides through it. Among the most interesting is Rameses smiting the Hittites. He appears shooting them with his arrows, while the name above relates the story: "He smote them." The priest is above, recording the number of the captives; the hands cut from each are falling in a shower at his feet. "The hearts of the Hittites faint within them, for Rameses pursues them as a young lion pursues his prey. Give yourselves to mirth; I am to Egypt what the god Mendon has been; I have vanquished the companies. Ammon Ra, my father, subdued the whole world under my feet, and I am king on the throne for ever."

For other inscriptions, refer to Champollion.

Manetho confirms this, and also the inscriptions which say he drove them to the bounds of Syria.

The Memnonium I visited next.

After riding round the grand entrance, or propylon, I went leisurely to exploring the battle scene on the river side. From this magnificent piece I turned, and rode my horse to the fallen statue of Osmandyas. Its grandeur, the beautiful polish of the black Syenite granite, the deep-cut cartouche upon the arm, the broken foot—how grand! how startling!

The next, properly the palace of Rameses, how beautiful !* It represents Sesostris's conquests, and those of Sethos, his brother, and predecessor. Entering, you see that magnificent fabric called the hall of Osiris, four colossal figures of whom form the columns;—those of Ipsamboul, can scarce be grander. Afterwards you enter a passage, passing through broken torsos, some standing, some fallen down, of beautiful sculpture and proportion, displaying art and preservation that no Parthenon can boast of. How splendid a ruin!

* Among the conquests, Sethos, his brother, is represented as having taken Punon, a station of the Israelites, near Mount Hor. (Numbers xxxiii. 43,44.)

On through this temple of art, the victorious hero, the builder sovereign of the palace is ever before you ; now himself receiving, now offering gifts to the gods, who are sculptured so finely: and now you enter a building of light stone structure, and finer sculpture. The victorious conqueror is here too. He sits, with his queen by his side, on the right hand of the opposite wall as you enter, but he has returned from a richer, a more genial clime, than even this sunny Said—from the region of tropical Asia. His captives have a Perso-Indian head-dress, and his companions are bearing trees, whose thick foliage, and hanging fruits, show the rich luxuriance of an equatorial growth. A cameleopard, as finely sculptured as if by an artist of the Zoological Gardens, forms part of the spoils of the conquered India; and the priests of Thoth stand with tablets, recording his victories, and the number of victims he has slain, on the fruit of a tree; and his pencil has half painted his cartouche.

And that door, where led that? Take up Diodorus; he describes all you have seen—battles, statues, colossi, and all: and what stood here in that door, leading toward the mountain? There, where ruins are fast disappearing, stood that glorious library of Thebes, and the Grecian coming hither, like us, a traveller, found written over the famous threshold, inscribed in golden letters, (would that it were written there in bright diamonds!) the magical words:

"Medicine for the mind—pharmacy for the soul." What a joy that here princes, priests, sages, and their scholars, hierophant and neophyte, came to consult the Physician of the soul—that bright letters were the glory of palaces of Egypt three thousand years ago. Where is that library, that refreshed the intellect of the court of Rameses the Great 1 The wise men of his realm were great still, as their figures show, in all that is noble of race: for the deluge had not long left the world green, and the patriarchal nobility of the young creation had not wholly degenerated. Where are those treasures of the intellect of Thebes and Diospolis? Alas! all gone. Perchance they formed a bonfire for Cambyses without the ancestral halls; perchance, like the Alexandrian treasures, they lit a Mohammedan bath. The rituals written here are preserved only in coffins of the dead, or give renown to an European museum; while coffin, ritual, mummy, and all, form the fuel to prepare many an Arab's dinner: and the noble papyri, the genealogies, the records of the high and beautiful civilization of these antique and once gorgeous palaces, are all gone.

Would I picture a proper device for Egypt, it should be the priest of Thoth, with reed and torch inverted, gazing at this desolate ruin, where the Grecian philosophic traveller found wisdom, and "balsam for the soul."

With a heart too full for utterance, I turned back, and mounted my horse. You shed tears by the tomb of a loved one, but if they pour down your cheeks here, it is from mingled sorrow at the desolation, and exultation at the thought that you are made in the image of a race that was so great, so civilized, and knew so well the powers of the mind and the secrets of the soul thirty centuries ago.

From such a past, and its contrasts with the battle scenes, we turn away, for its true glory redeems the blood-marked victories of Sesostris's conquering car. For the value of art, we sigh at the foolish childishness of Cambyses in destroying so much, and wonder that so much remains where he attempted to destroy the whole. It is a noble, a beautiful work; so thought Siculus, so thinks Warburtou—so thinks every one: we would as soon attempt to describe the "Venus de Medici."

Such a beautiful architectural wreck is that magnificent pile the Memnonium! From the majestic portal that faces the statues of Memnon and the Nile, through its whole extent, till you reach the lofty rock entrance in the rear; from the battles to the victories; they tell of triumphs that put to shame Napoleon, and show the ridiculous vanity of a conqueror, whose energy claims admiration, but whose cruelty and vanity are but ill redeemed by such beautiful art. Do the noble Colossus, in its breadth excelling the height of four ordinary men; the sieges, the astronomical figures, which tell the date, 1322 B. c.; the offerings to Mendes; the six courts, and richly sculptured chambers; the remains of the 200 columns which once stood here, some of which still stand, and others adorn the museums and galleries of the world; the crumbling Propylon, of which two hundred feet are still entire; the Dromos, or Portico; the Osiris Court, and its statues of the god with crossed sceptre; the basaltic figures and gigantic statues of Sesostris; the Pronaos, and Great Hall, with its nine compartments, its mythological processions, its offerings to the Theban Triad, its chambers with the budding lotus capitals, its ark processions of the priests, its ceiling of stars and astronomical processions and sacred boats, sacred birds, winged globe, crocodiles; Nepthis, and the mysterious emblems of the Hierophants:—do all these at all redeem the

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