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 serpents and the wings proceed. I have observed before, that, by the dragon, the ancients only meant a large serpent. Lucas seems to have been misled, by the wings that shadow them, to call them dragons; but the wings, in fact, issue with the serpents from the central orb.

Before we entirely quit Luxore for the regions nearer the source of the Nile, there is one circumstance peculiarly deserving of consideration, 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 sculptures at Salsette, plainly traced on many of the statues the paint and gilding with which they were anciently decorated. The same species of decoration is still more conspicuously visible on the temples and statues of Thebes, and these united circumstances remarkably corroborate the conjecture offered towards the close of the first part of the preceding volume of Dissertations, that they are only relicks of ancient Chaldæan idolatry, the idols of which appear,

from the picturesque description of them there cited from Ezekiel, to have been sculptured and adorned in a manner strikingly similar. M. De Pauw, in his treatise entitled Recherches Philosophiques sur 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 very remaining traits of the vivid colouring, it is evident that they must have understood the art of making their colours brilliant and durable in a manner unknown to their posterity..

As we ascend still higher that rich magazine of buried treasures, the Thebais of Egypt, in quest of a few other remarkable antiquities, more immediately connected with our subject, and as we pass along the winding shore of the Nile, let us not forget that, like the Gnges, its waves are HALLOWED by the superstitious natives. They call the Nile, says Mr. Volney, holy, blessed, sacred; and, on the appearance

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every fresh inundation, that is, on the opening of the canals, mothers are seen plunging their children into the stream, from a belief that these waters have a purifying and divine virtue."* The Ganges, we have observed from the Ayeen Akbery, flows from the hair of Veeshnu;

* Volney's Travels in Egypt and Syria, vol. i. p. 19.

and the Nile is said, in the often-cited treatise of Plutarch, to be the efflux of Osiris, who is at once the great principle of moisture, signified by his floating like Brahma on the leaf of the lotos in water, and the source of fecundity, typified by the prolific PHALLUS, as Seeva, in India, is by the generative LINGAM,

SECTION III.

In this Section the Origin and Progress of ARCHITECTURE are considered principally as that Science has Reference to and is connected. with the astronomical and mythological Notions of the Ancients.-In the Course of it is detailed the History of the FOUR GRECIAN ORDERS; and accurate Descriptions are given of the most celebrated Temples of Greece, compared, in their Designs and symbolical Decorations, with those of Egypt and India.

It would be unnecessary for us to ascend the Nile beyond Luxore, were it not for the sake of still farther illustrating my assertion relative to the wonderful feature of similarity, I mean in point of grandeur and form, that prevails in the ARCHITECTURE of those two most celebrated empires of the ancient world, Egypt and India. Raised in the infancy of science, the stupendous edifices of the Thebais have now for above 3000 years, withstood the raging elements and

the violence of corroding time. Sublime in native majesty, they tower above the boldest efforts of every succeeding race of mortals to rival them; and, while they fill us with awe and reverence, excite in us the utmost astonishment, that it was possible for mankind in the dawn of the arts to raise fabrics at once so lofty and so durable. Oriental ARCHITECTURE is deeply connected with Oriental HISTORY, since it was an immemorial custom throughout all the East for the captives, taken in battle, to be employed by the victor in erecting fabrics, the sculptured walls of which recorded his triumphs, while its costly decorations announced to posterity his riches and magnificence. The hieroglyphic sculptures on the sepulchral temple of Sesostris are direct proofs of this assertion. Some of the finest edifices of Persia were raised after the demolition of the Egyptian temples by Cambyses. Alexander, on his return from Persia, seems to have aimed at acquiring immortality by his stupendous efforts in architecture; and the barbarian Timur, in later periods, enriched the imperial city of Samarcand not less by the labour of Indian architects than the glittering spoils of the Indian metropolis. A retrospective history of architecture will also be useful to mark the progress of superstition, since