and Memnon's music but lives in the poetry that in every age has been written upon its note. Strabo, ./Elius Gallus, and Diodorus, were happy men, and they were not like us from America, who came further, and fared worse.

The usual ideas come up here—the time-worn statues; what kingdoms have they outlasted, what revolutions outlived, defying time and the Persian destroyer! Continents have been settled from bound to bound; worlds discovered, civilized, ruined—still they stand historians of the ages and the Cbohs. Coming from a land which has iu no fabric, at least that I have seen, a stone or timber that belonged not to a quarry or forest three hundred years ago, the very idea of these statues made my soul widen and widen, and my imagination stretch so, to think they were of time and history, and yet only half of time; and this earth's history: and then I thought of the world's stars and their histories; and then I thought of long, long agone creation—and then eternity—and God! And Memnon's music then seemed spheral music, for it brought me to God by conclusion and comparison; and I was never satisfied till I stood before the statue of Memnon: and now as I sat on my horse, and thought what it had been there, and oft since in my mind, low whisperings came to my soul,

"from thai immortal sea
That brought us hither;"
"I saw the children play upon the shore,
And heard its mighty waters rolling evermore."

And standing here, we can picture to ourselves more than elsewhere the grandeur of ancient Thebes, with her hundred gates; she who sent forward to the Trojan war the hosts of the "nigrantis Memnonis."

Here stood the two statues at the entrance to a grand court of statues, that extended to the Memnonium under the mountain. The whole plain to the mountain has fragments of statues, all lying in a line.

And the road to the river, where lies our boat, and over which we are just to spur our horses, had, doubtless, another court. This was the royal street of Thebes, mentioned in the papyri of ancient Thebes. What was this in the time of Osiren and Memnon! What a field of buildings and temples you looked over, towards the palace of the descendants of Rameses and Sesostris, now the ruins of Medinet Habou! How gloriously rode the triumphing kings along that royal way, as they returned from the conquests! How many answering sounds around met Memnon's music at the morning light! How desolate the plain now! How many ages of desolation since then!

From Medinet Habou you proceed north to the valley of Hadj Achmed, and in a side of the mountain are a few tombs of the queens. The way is wild, strewn with rocks, and filled with precipices; the mountain gaps of a sterile and desert appearance. In the most terrible gorges of Switzerland or Scotland I have never seen nature so awful as in this pass. It would be a fit place for a Pandemonium to be laid in. Here the robber might well find his home; and our guide's spear, which he now and then turned towards us, brandishing, seemed a reliance. I mentioned to my friend that I had left my pistols, and he replied that it was the very time we needed them.

In the valley of Hadj Achmed lie the tombs of the queens. These we visited, after Medinet Habou and the southern Dair. The tomb of Queen Taosri, who married Sethos, first king of the nineteenth dynasty, we explored, and it is one of the finest in Thebes. Most of the monuments speak of that king's inheritance in her right. Champollion quotes many of the inscriptions in his Grammar. This was 1269 B. c. Sethos erected the avenue of sphinxes at Karnac, and the small chambers of the front area, and was predecessor to Osiren II. and Amenophis.

Among the most distinguished, is that of Amunmeii, or Amun-tmei, daughter of Amunoph.

The tomb of Queen Tayri, or Teari, is shown. I also entered one of the wife of Amunoph III., and also a tomb of the favorite daughter of Rameses V. The tombs are not satisfactory, as you have to stoop even when in the best part, and they are like the catacombs of Alexandria. They have been injured by fire. The painting is not fresh, as in Biban-elMemlook. In the tomb of Queen Theti is some interest.*

The tombs of the priests lie in the valley of El Assassif, which you see from the mountain precipice above the valley of Biban-el-Memlook, stretching below to the south of the temple of northern Dair, and in the way to the Memnonium. They are made up of the private sepulchres of the rich Thebans, the largest and finest of which is that of the celebrated priest and prophet Petamenoph and his family; his name is at Medinet Habou.

The pitfalls all along, in what was the necropolis of ancient Thebes, and where modern Thebes finds her fuel in the mummy cases and papyri chambers cut in the rock, ornamented with fine paintings, show manners and customs which you do not see in the tombs of the kings. Some of these are highly illustrative of Scripture; and Hengstenberg, Osborn, and others, have dwelt upon them. Some of the entrances

• See Champollion's Grammaire Egyptienne, pp. 276, 408, 394, 357, 404.

are very perfect—cut in the rock, and ornamented with paintings and sculptures; and in some you have to enter a la Belzoni. Here you may unroll mummies and read their history: and very fine ones are found here, though the difficulty is, to get them through the custom-house. The scenes in some are finely depicted—the threshing and hunting scenes.

And the thousand marks of the nothingness of men is so exemplified here !—a Pharaoh's ribs cooking an Arab breakfast!

"To what strange uses do we come at last!"

The subject is not pleasant, and has been over-written.

The small temple of Isis behind the Memnonium was considered by travellers of the last decade to be the oldest monument in Thebes;—this, and the granite sanctuary in Karnac. This temple is really beautiful and perfect. It is approached by a mountain passage. Several pits are to be seen near. It is a mile from Medinet Habou. Numerous ruins may be seen on the way to it, all along the plain.

Gournou is considered by many to contain some of the oldest monuments in Thebes. The sculptures, for the most part, bear the name of Osiren. Colossal statues of Rameses II. and of other monarchs, and fragments of other statues, are scattered throughout the plain. The most striking ruin is that of Aerebck, the architecture of which is in the same style as Medinet Habou. The columns are made of lotus-reeds bound together; and the names of Meneptha I. and Osiren are scattered over them. This style of architecture adorns the oldest ruins in Thebes. The pronaos has like piazzas of three columns each; and on the walls, which are crumbling away, figures of Osiris with his scourge and crook in his hand, the hatchet, the ark, the lotus fruit, the winged globe, the serpent, fine bas-reliefs, offerings to the deities, among whom is Ammon Ra, the ram-headed deity, from which we suppose that Jupiter Ammon was worshipped here, as also at Karnac. Here was the hall of assembly of ancient Thebes. Here the Theban senate discussed the policy of government, receiving the decrees of the hierarchy, who governed here, as well as in the temple of Jupiter Ammon. The ruin, when seen by day, appeared simple and beautiful; and afterwards, when returning by moonlight, at midnight, from the tombs of the kings, the pale light threw shadows through its halls, wrapping the dim figures and names in a splendor, which accorded well with their antiquity and obscurity.

Near these ruins lies the beautiful village of Gournou, which, among the Arab villages of Egypt, is perhaps the most attractive. It is extremely well built, and surrounded by fertile groves, like the ruins in the midst of a plain of luxuriant corn-fields, and fields of as fertile crops and fruits as when Osiren had his palace residence here, three thousand years ago.

A part of Gournou, which is fronted by the pillars of lotus reed, it is said was built by Menephthah I., and his son, Rameses the Great. One of the inscriptions, "Menephthah Barei, son of the Sun, constructed this habitation for years." Here Menephthah offers flowers to the Theban Triad.*

We visited next the temple Dair, which in its construction by the Queen Amunmeitgori, tells some interesting histories of Egypt.

Just under the lofty precipice, which is above the Bibanel-Memlook, and from which one of the most awful prospects