EGYPT 
 
 FRANCIS FRITH. 
 
 “i BOAST NO SONG IN MAGIC WONDERS lUI'E : 
 
 AND YET, 0 NATURE! IS THERE NAUGHT TO PRIZE 
 FAMILIAR IN THY BOSOM SCENES OF LIFE? 
 
 and dwells in DAYLIGHT TRUTH’S salubrious skies 
 
 NO FORM WITH WHICH THE SOUL MAY SYMPATHIZE?” 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 JAMES S. VIRTUE, CITY ROAD AND IVY LANE. 
 
 AND 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 
 VOL, I, 
 
 NEW YORK: 26, JOHN STREET. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ALAAM ! — Peace be with thee, oh, thou pleasant Buyer of my book ! 
 
 ******* 
 
 It is my intention, should my life be spared, and should the present undertaking prove 
 successful, to present to the public, from time to time, my impressions of foreign lands, 
 illustrated by photographic views. 
 
 I have chosen, as a beginning of ray labours, the two most interesting lands of the globe 
 and Palestine. Were but the character of the Pen for severe truthfulness as unimpeachable 
 f as that of the Camera, what graphic pictures might they together paint ! But we scarcely expect from 
 a traveller “ the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” Hear Albert Smith, himself an 
 accomplished traveller, and a popular author — “ Artists and writers will study effect, rather than graphic 
 truth. The florid description of some modern book of travel is as different from the actual impressions of 
 ninety-nine people out of a hundred, allowing all these persons to possess average education, perception, 
 and intellect, when painting in their minds the same subject, as the artfully tinted lithograph, or picturesque 
 engraving of the portfolio, or annual, is from the faithful photograph.” Nobody that has ever floated in a daliibieh 
 will argue that any existing Nile book conveys “ graphic truth.” Yet it does not follow, 0 Albert Smith, 
 that a photograph, because it is not “ over-coloured,” is therefore faithful. I am all too deeply enamoured of the 
 gorgeous, sunny East, to feign that my insipid, colourless pictures are by any means just to her spiritual charms. 
 But, indeed, I hold it to be impossible, by any means, fully and truthfully to inform the mind of scenes which 
 are wholly foreign to the eye. There is no effectual substitute for actual travel ; but it is my ambition to 
 provide for those to whom circumstances forbid that luxury, faithful representations of the scenes I have 
 witnessed, and I shall endeavour to make the simple truthfulness of the Camera a guide for my Pen. 
 
 Now we shall see (if my bungling does not spoil the match) what sort of chance Fact has with Fiction in 
 the race for popularity. It is certain that a very large proportion — probably two-tliirds — of the entire reading 
 of the British public consists of works of fiction. Everybody, almost, — 
 
 “ In these o'erpolish’d times, 
 
 Can shed the tear o'er woeful rhymes : 
 
 O’er plot of novel sore repine, 
 
 And cry for hapless heroine." 
 
 Hooo. 
 
 But few, I fear, can tolerate simple truthfulness : there is not enough of excitement in it. Even English- 
 men relish a little of that pleasant hyperbole which the Orientals stretch to its limit of tension. It is remark- 
 able that perhaps every book of world-wide fame (except the Holy Scriptures) is a romance. Shakspere, Milton, 
 Dante, nearly all the poets are novelists. Cervantes, Bunyan, De Foe, Harriet Stowe, — all novelists. Further- 
 more, a man sitting quietly at home in London or New York, may 'write even a Book of Travel, and an artist 
 may compose for it a series of illustrations, with every chance of success, upon the most scanty materials, 
 and without the cost and labour of travelling. It is an artist’s privilege to “make a picture” of his subject ; 
 but, alas for the poor photographer ! and alack for the man who will write the truth if he can, at all hazards ! 
 — They must be dull. 
 
 A photographer only knows — he only can appreciate the difficulty of getting a view satisfactorily into the 
 camera : foregrounds are especially perverse ; distance too near or too far ; the falling away of the ground ; the 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 intervention of some brick wall or other commonplace object, which an artist would simply omit ; some or all of 
 these things (with plenty others of a similar character) are the rule, not the exception. I have often thought, 
 when manoeuvring about for a position for my camera, of the exclamation of the great mechanist of antiquity — 
 “ Give me a fulcrum for my lever, and I will move the world.” Oh what pictures we would make, if we could 
 command our points of view ! 
 
 I may be allowed to state, as giving additional value to good Photographs of eastern antiquities, that a 
 change is rapidly passing over many of the most interesting : in addition to the corroding tooth of Time, and 
 the ceaseless drifting of the remorseless sand, Temples and Tombs are exposed to continued plundering — 
 Governors of districts take the huge blocks of stone, and the villagers walk off with the available bricks, 
 whilst travellers of all nations break up and carry off, without scruple, the most interesting of the sculptured 
 friezes and the most beautiful of the architectural ornaments. 
 
 The difficulties which I had to overcome in working collodion, in those hot and dry climates, were also very 
 serious. When (at the Second Cataract, one thousand miles from the mouth of the Nile, with the thermometer 
 at 110° in my tent) the collodion actually boiled when poured upon the glass plate, I almost despaired of 
 success. By degrees, however, I overcame this and other difficulties ; but suffered a good deal throughout the 
 journey from the severe labour rendered necessary by the rapidity with which every stage of the process must 
 be conducted in climates such as these ; and from excessive perspiration, consequent on the suffocating heat of 
 a small tent, from which every ray of light, and consequently every breath of air, was necessarily excluded. 
 
 I think I will confess to a weakness for rapid production in all that I undertake. My views have been taken, 
 for the most part, whilst my friends were hastily inspecting the scenes or object copied ; and as for my letter- 
 press, I can only write rapidly, and in the very words which first occur ; I dare not revise — out goes one-half 
 that I have written, and the remainder is intolerably dull. I have, however, one consolation, viz., that if the 
 critics will be good enough not to call disagreeable attention to my writing, not one person in ten will think of 
 looking at it. Scarcely any one ever does read the letter-press which accompanies a series of views, any more 
 than one thinks of scrutinising the “gold sticks” who shuffle, as a matter of course, after a royal pageant. 
 Doubtless I am indebted for this security to the learned dulness of the great men who have hitherto invariably 
 written for illustrated works ; not one of whom, as far as I recollect, has been personally acquainted with the 
 scenes which he undertook to describe : I am perfectly content that my own descriptive matter should thus be 
 considered as entirely subordinate to the views. I have neither had time for elaborate investigations on the 
 spot, nor is present space afforded for much topographical or critical detail : upon such points I shall often 
 prefer simply to quote the opinions at which other and more useful investigators have arrived. 
 
CONTENTS,— YOL. I. 
 
 PORTRAIT: TURKISH SUMMER COSTUME. 
 
 THE SPHYNX, AND GREAT PYRAMID, GEZEH. 
 
 TEMPLE OF KOUM OMBO. 
 
 THE POOL OF HEZEKIAH, CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE, &c. 
 CLEOPATRA'S TEMPLE AT ERMENT. 
 
 PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH, &c. 
 
 NAZARETH, FROM THE NORTH-WEST. 
 
 VIEW AT LUXOR, THEBES. 
 
 BETHLEHEM, WITH THE CHURCH OF THE NATIVITY. 
 
 SCULPTURES FROM THE OUTER WALL, DENDERA. 
 
 VIEW FROM THE ISLAND OF PHIL^E. 
 
 ENTRANCE TO THE GREAT TEMPLE, LUXOR. 
 
 NABLOUS. 
 
 COLOSSI AND SPHYNX AT WADY SABOUA, NUBIA. 
 
 FACADE OF THE GREAT TEMPLE AT ABOU SIMBEL. 
 
 BAALBEC, GENERAL VIEW. FROM THE SOUTH. 
 
 OSIRID.E PILLARS AND FALLEN COLOSSUS. 
 
 VIEW AT HEBRON. 
 
 “ PHARAOH'S BED,” ISLAND OF PHIL.E. 
 
 THE TOWN AND LAKE OF TIBERIAS, FROM THE NORTH. 
 
 THE HALL OF COLUMNS, KARNAC. 
 
 DAMASCUS. 
 
 BAALBEC : DISTANT VIEW OF THE SIX COLUMNS OF THE GREAT TEMPLE. 
 RUINED MOSQUE AND DISTANT VIEW OF PHIL/E. 
 
 SCULPTURED GATEWAY, KARNAC. 
 
 VIEW OF GIRGEH, UPPER EGYPT. 
 
 GRANITE OBELISK AND LOTUS COLUMN, KARNAC. 
 
 JERUSALEM : THE MOSQUE OF OMAR, FROM WITHIN THE ZION GATE. 
 
 THE STATUES OF MEMNON, PLAIN OF THEBES. 
 
 THE GREAT COLUMNS AND SMALLER TEMPLE, BAALBEC. 
 
 PORTION OF THE GREAT TEMPLE, LUXOR (THE GOVERNMENT CORN STORES). 
 ANTIQUITIES UPON THE ISLAND OF BIGGEH, NEAR PHIL/E. 
 
 ' JERUSALEM, FROM THE WELL OF EN-ROGEL. 
 
 INTERIOR COURT OF THE TEMPLE OF MEDINET-HABOO, THEBES. 
 
 THE MEMNONIUM, THEBES. 
 
 JERUSALEM FROM THE CITY WALL. 
 
 THE NORTHERN SHORE OF THE DEAD SEA. 
 
PORTRAIT : TURKISH SUMMER COSTUME. 
 
 GIVE this single illustration of Eastern Costume, having nothing else of the kind to offer. It 
 consists of a vest with sleeves made of Damascus silk of some gorgeous pattern — blue or scarlet, 
 and gold ; white trowsers, white or blue stockings, with red silk garters ; and, for out of doors, a 
 gown reaching to the ankles, open in front, made of the finest Cashmere, and of some most beautiful 
 and delicate self-colour — azure blue, cinnamon, or rose-pink. 
 
 “ Costume ” is one of the most striking and interesting features of the East. If you should 
 ever have the fortune to see it, you will be surprised and delighted by its novelty and variety of 
 form, and the splendour of its colours. You will see at once that fashion has had little or no sway here. 
 Every man robes himself according to his own free, gorgeous fancy. I do not recollect that I ever saw two 
 orientals dressed alike, and an Eastern crowd rivals in brilliance and variety the flowers in your garden. 
 Did but the sun paint in colours upon our bits of magic glass, what a delightful series of pictures would 
 Eastern costume furnish ! But until we can press into the service of the Camera these fairy children of light, 
 we must veil our heads before our brothers of the brush and palette, who may paint with little fear of 
 exaggeration, even to the verge of Pre-Raphaelite brilliancy, from the listless, dreaming, graceful life-studies of 
 the East. 
 
 In addition to this illustration let me try to describe the Winter Dress, having before my mind, in vivid 
 remembrance, a Turkish gentleman of Cairo, braving the rigour of an Egyptian December. The thermometer 
 stands at 75° in the shade, but he wears his heavy cloth. He is fat, and somewhat pale : obesity is a much 
 admired and very frequent condition of a Turkish gentleman ; I have seen more huge and unpleasantly fat 
 men in the East than I ever encountered elsewhere. His head his close-shaved, as is every Mohammedan’s, 
 with the exception of the one long lock twisted up at top, by which the wearer hopes to be lifted into 
 Paradise. That everlasting tarbouch ! that greasy, brick-red, close-fitting, hot skull-cap, which admits of no 
 ventilation, and affords no shade. Everbody wears it at all times : by night and day, in doors and out, in 
 mosques, and* at meals, men, women, and children, eat, smoke, and walk in it. Even at the courts of Constan- 
 tinople and Cairo, where European costume is now universally aped, the tarbouch keeps hold of the national 
 head — nay, every European traveller buys, and tries to wear it. The tarbouch, like the dragon in the 
 Revelations, seems destined to reign its thousand years, all human reasons and human efforts to the contrary, 
 notwithstanding. The red Morocco, sharp, up-toed slippers are also common ; but are rapidly giving place 
 to clumsy, European-shaped shoes. But oh, the gaiters which “feather” fantastically over these clumsy 
 feet ! — they arc of very fine blue or puce cloth, like the rest of the suit, but lapclled, and Yandyked, and 
 braided to thy heart’s content. You will turn round a hundred times, and wonder, after those strange and 
 elaborate creations of the human mind. Turkish trowsers I shrink from describing ; but if any of my 
 readers have a fancy for a pair, they are welcome to the following recipe, which I pledge myself is 
 literally correct : — Take four yards of broadcloth of some brilliant colour, fold the piece in the middle, and 
 sew up the end ; you will then have a bag six feet wide by five feet deep, open at top and at bottom ; 
 sew up the bottom, except a small hole in each extreme corner, for the feet to come .through, and your 
 trowsers a la Turqiic are complete : to wear them, the top of the bag must be bodkined, puckered, and gathered 
 round the body with a worsted sash of bright colours and voluminous folds. The two yards of heavy double 
 cloth which, as it were, webs the legs together, like the connecting membrane of the foot of a goose, hangs, 
 you may imagine, with awful square solidity, in the mid-space ; and when the fat gentleman walks, or rather 
 waddles and rolls along, how it sways, and pendulates, and thumps first against one leg and then against the 
 other ! A waistcoat, overrun with gold lace in any conceivable pattern, and a square-cut short jacket, elaborately 
 braided, complete the suit. The Turks dress extravagantly : such a suit will often cost thirty or forty pounds. 
 
 Eastern costume is one of the beautiful blunders of a luxurious, but half-civilized state of society. 
 Damascus and Cairo are not what they were ; but they are not yet disenchanted. Hasten to see them before 
 Europe has entirely disrobed Asia ! 
 


 
THE SPHYNI, AND GREAT PYRAMID, GEZEH. 
 
 ^HE day and hour in a man’s life upon which he first obtains a view of “ The Pyramids,” is 
 a time to date from for many a year to come ; he is approaching, as it were, the presence 
 of an immortality which has mingled vaguely with his thoughts from very childhood, and has 
 t r !' i )e en to him unconsciously an essential and beautiful form, and the most majestic mystery ever 
 
 f ' created by man. 
 
 “The Pyramids” far excellence (for there are several of inferior magnitude in the vicinity, 
 as those of Saccara and Dashour) are situated nearly opposite Cairo, about six miles to the west of the river. 
 At low water the ride from the modern town of Gezeh, through palm groves, and fields of corn and lupins, 
 is a pleasant one. The Pyramids are in full view almost all the way, and seem ever to remain at the same 
 distance from the eye, even until one stands close under them, when their vastness becomes suddenly 
 oppressive. They stand on a finely elevated plateau of sandstone, on the declivities of which are many 
 picturesque rock tombs, forming part of the necropolis of the neighbouring city of Memphis, now marked only 
 by huge mounds. The necropolis consists partly of tombs of this nature, partly of sunk shafts, partly of 
 massive mausolea, and stretches for many miles along the edge of the desert, around the grandest of its 
 sepulchres, the Pyramids. 
 
 These Pyramids are believed to be the oldest (as they certainly are among the mightiest and most 
 enduring) monuments of human art in the world. The largest was built in the reign of Sliufa (the Cheops 
 of the Greek writers), and therefore possesses an antiquity of not less than four thousand years ; but although 
 
 thus much has been ascertained by the evidence of contemporary hieroglyphics, the history of the erection 
 of the structure is preserved only (or perhaps perverted) in the traditions recorded by Herodotus, Diodorus, 
 and others. Among many remarkable facts recorded by these authors may be mentioned one, that 360,000 
 men were employed in the work for twenty years. Its base is 746 feet, its height 450 feet ; it covers an 
 area of about twelve acres, a space which is often — for the sake of familiar illustration — compared with the 
 nearly equal one occupied by Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields. The second Pyramid (called Belzoni’s, of which an 
 illustration will be given hereafter) still retains a portion of the layer of dressed limestone with which the 
 whole exterior was originally cased. And the Great Pyramid has been similarly finished, although none of 
 these stones now remain, having probably been removed in course of the extensive spoliations carried on 
 during the reign of the Caliphs, to procure building material for the then rising city of Cairo. There are at 
 Gezeh three principal pyramids, and other interesting remains which will amply repay research : as the areat 
 paved road which probably led from the river, the remains of temples, and passages — now chiefly under- 
 ground — leading to no one knows whither, and some of which are built or lined with massive blocks of 
 
 alabaster and granite. 
 
 The Sphynx, whose base has more than once of late years been to a greater or less extent uncovered, is 
 again almost entirely hidden by the drifted sand, and the entrance to a small temple — executed in the sand- 
 stone rock between his fore paws— is, in consequence, no longer visible. The profile, as given in ray view 
 
 is truly hideous. I fancy that I have read of its beautiful, calm, majestic features ; let my reader look at it 
 and say if he does not agree with me, that it can scarcely have been, even in its palmiest days, otherwise 
 than exceedingly ugly. 
 
 I shall not be expected to give details of the explorations which have been made from time to time into 
 the interiors of the Pyramids ; suffice it to say that they have been, at intervals of many centuries, opened 
 and again closed. Belzoni and Colonel Yyse have been the two successful explorers of modern times ; the 
 former displayed wonderful tact and perseverance in reopening the second Pyramid, but was not rewarded 
 ky any very important discovery — its one central chamber contained a sarcophagus sunk in the floor. That 
 these buildings were intended mainly as sepulchres is the almost universal opinion. 
 
TEMPLE OF KOIIM OMBO. 
 
 f ie traveller's dahibieh glides noiselessly to the south, on the bosom of the father of rivers, 
 
 J low green banks, with their mud villages and palm-tree groves, are occasionally relieved 
 a bold projection of rock standing out into the stream. On such an eminence, nearly 
 e hundred miles south of Cairo, and one hundred miles beyond Thebes, we welcome the 
 ruins of Koum Ombo. Here the river makes a wide majestic bend, and on the sand- 
 banks opposite the temple may often bo seen, basking in the hot noonday-sun, two or 
 rocodiles. Mooring to the shore, as the light breeze entirely fails us, we scramble up to 
 ,7\i the temple area. But ere we begin the ascent, we pause to consider the dimensions of the gigantic 
 ■■■ i blocks of granite and sandstone, covered with that strange handwriting of the infancy of time. Wo feel 
 that they ought to be measured, but it constantly occurs to us that fifty people have done this before us ; and so, 
 passing the dilapidated pylon, we stand in a few minutes on the spot from which my view is taken. The view 
 from this point is most extraordinary: the accumulated sands of ages have buried this once magnificent pile to 
 the capitals of the columns, and its stunted height strikes you as strangely disproportionate to the vastness of its 
 other dimensions, and the immense size of the stones. It reminds you of some grand old giant, buried to 
 the shoulders— not dead yet, but overpowered and imprisoned by some potent spell— majestic in his helplessness. 
 Hazing on the magnificence of the visible portion of this splendid ruin, it does not seem too much to hope 
 that Koum Ombo may at some period be released from this sandy sepulchre, and the men of three thousand 
 years hence may look on his wonderful proportions, and admire the prowess of the men of three thousand 
 years ago Turn to the picture, and compare the size of the sculptured blocks of stone with the two Nile 
 sailors standing near one of them, for of such blocks is the whole temple built. It is aggravating to know 
 that a money-grubbing, sugar-baking pasha (Abbas) has split up and carried off many of these superb 
 blocks, to be used in the building of his sugar refineries, of which branch of trade, and many others, the 
 paslia usurps a monopoly. 
 
 Observe that upon the front of this temple are two entrance friezes, indicated by the double agathodeemon 
 or winged globe-an emblem of omnipresent deity, which is spread with much beauty and effect over all the 
 antique doorways of Egypt. This duplication of the emblem at Koum Ombo (a solitary instance), as well 
 as the interior sculptures, indicate that the temple was dedicated to two deities. The only further remark 
 which need bo made regarding the sculpture of this temple is, that upon the ceiling of the portico are sundry 
 unfinished figures, drawn in squares, showing the principle upon which the Egyptian draughtsmen preserved 
 their proportions. 
 
 The only remains of antiquity which seem to have suggested an idea to the modern architects of Egypt, 
 are the crude brick walls which appear to have enclosed the sacred precincts of many of the temples. At 
 Koum Ombo some prodigious masses of this kind of wall remain. Think of the climate in which even 
 unbaked Nile-mud bricks will stand square and solid for two thousand years ! Sir G. Wilkinson says of this 
 temple “ It was founded in the reign of Ptolemy Philomcter, continued by his brother Physcon (who is 
 introduced, as usual, with his queens, the two Cleopatras), and finished by Auletes or Neus Dionysus.” Tlius, 
 although the principal ruins date from only shortly before the Christian era, there are traces of much earlier 
 structures, some probably of the early epoch of the Pharaohs of the eighteenth dynasty. In the steep bank 
 facing the river are remains of an approach, beautifully sculptured. 
 
 Immediately behind the temple I shot my first Egyptian hare, rather small, but well flavoured. I also 
 saw several covies of very wild partridges. Stretching away to the south are extensive plantations oi the 
 castor-oil plant, cotton fields, &c. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

THE POOL OE HEZEKIAH, CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE, 
 
 FROM THE TOWER OF HIPPICUS, JERUSALEM. 
 
 DO not. envy the man who can enter unmoved the land — 
 
 “ Where the holiest of memories, phantom-like, throng.” 
 
 If he has no organ of veneration, he had better stop at home and read “ Eothen.” I cannot write 
 lightly oi Holy Palestine. It is true that the natural features of the country are, for the most 
 7 lyy P art > monotonous and comparatively uninteresting,— that the towns are paltry and dirty in the 
 T^'j extreme— that the Turkish Mohammedan population is ignorant and bigoted,— that the Arabs who 
 U'j infest its solitudes are the laziest, the most cowardly, and worthless set of fellows — in a word, and 
 
 ) ' in every sense of it, the greatest vagabonds in existence : yet, in spite of all this, and overwhelming 
 
 it all triumphantly, comes the thrilling recollection— that this was the country of Abraham and the Prophets !— 
 these the cities of David ! and— first and last, and mingling with every line of its eventful history— that this 
 
 was the spot of His earth chosen by its Creator from the beginning, upon which the plan of His salvation 
 should be finished. It was in Palestine that he was made flesh and dwelt among men. And it was especially 
 in Jerusalem and its neighbourhood that He fulfilled his ministry, manifested his Divine nature, and finally, 
 in one awful hour, “ in his own body on the tree,” sustained the accumulated sins, and suffered the concentrated 
 agony of the whole human race. No wonder that men have striven to perpetuate the local memories of even 
 the most trivial events of this glorious and awful period. And yet, in spite of man’s most earnest endeavours, 
 most of these localities are irretrievably lost : even the site of the holy Sepulclire is doubtful. May we not 
 recognise in this uncertainty— to which we find a parallel in the concealment of the burial-place of Moses— 
 the hand of Providence defeating the tendency of mankind to place-worship, and its attendant ceremonials ? 
 
 I shall have more to say respecting the general features of modern Jerusalem, in connection with some other 
 of my views : I confine myself, at present, to a short notice of the more prominent objects in the picture before 
 us, viz., the Pool of Hezekiah, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. We read (2 Kings xx. 20), that “ Hezekiah 
 made a pool and a conduit, and brought water into the city;” and also (2 Chron. xxxii. 30), that he “stopped the 
 upper water-course of Gihon, and brought it straight down to the west side of the city of David.” Upon this 
 Dr. Robinson observes “ From this language we can only infer, that Hezekiah constructed a pool within the 
 city on its western part. To such a pool the present reservoir, which is doubtless an ancient work, entirely 
 corresponds ; and it is also fed in a similar manner.” The buildings with railings extending over the Pool 
 are “The Mediterranean,” and other hotels, and will probably be familiar to many of my readers. The Pool 
 still continues to supply the city with water. It is 240 feet long, by 144 feet broad. 
 
 The dilapidated domes of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre proclaim its present condition ; but the front 
 is a good specimen of Byzantine architecture. It is in the joint possession of the Greek and Latin churches, 
 and the ceremonies performed in it at Easter have been described by a host of travellers. It was formerly 
 and more appropriately, called the Church of the Resurrection. It has been twice, at least, totally destroyed ; 
 once in the 7th, and again in the 11th century,— and as late as 1808. the greater part of the church and the 
 whole of the cupola were destroyed by fire. The identity of the site, as before remarked, is very questionable : 
 we are told that the Sepulchre was “ in a garden nigh at hand ” where Jesus was crucified ; and the crucifixion 
 took place without the walls. Dr. Robinson satisfied himself, by a survey from the very spot on which this 
 view was taken, that the present site could never have been excluded by the second wall (see his “ Researches,” 
 vol. i. p. 410). 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

CLEOPATRA’S TEMPLE AT ERMENT, 
 
 VOYAGE up the Nile completely unsettles one’s previous ideas of antiquity. We have been 
 W*mm use d g aze U p 0n the crumbling monuments of Old England with a sort of national family 
 pride. The tenth century — the period when their architects and builders, vagrant hordes of 
 inspired Goths, wandered through the land — the time of hooded monks and mail-clad knights, 
 looms mistily upon our imaginations as from the birth of Time. How strange that the day 
 should ever come when things thrice the age of “Old England” itself are looked upon as of 
 
 f too late a date to excite emotion — nay, almost to command interest ! Yet such is the case, or at least 
 the fashion in Egypt. A work which does not boast of at least three thousand years is “degenerate” — 
 V modern — of no interest. Let us struggle against this prejudice ; admitting the old adage, “ that all things 
 
 must be judged by comparison,” we will, if you please, compare Cleopatra’s Temple at Erment, not with 
 the older monuments of Egypt, but with antiquities which are regarded at home as interesting and important. 
 
 Cleopatra lived shortly before the Christian era, consequently, the columns which compose my picture, 
 
 and which formed the portico of the smaller of two temples which once stood here, are little short of two 
 thousand years old. A further portion of the same temple still exists, but it has been greatly broken up of 
 late by the Turks for the sake of the stone. The sculptures represent Cleopatra making offerings to various 
 deities ; amongst others to Basis, the sacred Bull of Hermonthis, which was the ancient name of Erment. Her. 
 son, by Julius Cfesar, who was named Neocsesar, or Cassation, also appears amongst the sculptures. 
 
 Erment is situated on the west bank of the river, about seven miles south of Thebes, from which place 
 
 it may be visited. The ride is over the rich plain of Thebes, covered (when free from water) with interminable 
 
 crops of beans and of the small Egyptian pea, and abounding in quails and partridges. 
 
 My own recollections of a visit to Erment are these : — Approaching it from the south, a large island with 
 shallow water on its western side prevented the near approach of the dahibieh ; we therefore took the “ sandal” 
 (small rowing boat), with a couple of our crew, to whose guidance we resigned ourselves, — the dragoman, 
 although he had been up the river, according to his own statement, sixteen times, and was certainly one of 
 the smartest men of his class whom we saw in Egypt, having no idea where the temple lay. We were accordingly 
 put ashore with our cumbrous loads of apparatus, &c., and began our walk over the rough ground, and under 
 the hot sun ; not having the temple in view, but hoping on and on, — through the beds of dry canals — through 
 dirty mud villages, suffocating us with noxious dust, and swarming with vermin, and^ curs, and black 
 children, naked and hideous. Mile after mile we went — almost parallel with the river — until we began to 
 regard our guides, our temple-mania, our stars, our photographic lumber, ourselves and each other, as so many 
 palpable mockeries and snares. Such were our feelings when we came suddenly in sight of these beautiful 
 columns, and the weary and dusty walk was soon forgotten in the pleasure of transferring them to glass. 
 This done, we toiled back to a nearer point of the river, but had not proceeded far before our further progress 
 was barred by the shallowness of the water. We were hungry and exhausted, but there was nothing for it 
 but to go overboard, and, up to the knees in water, we dragged the clumsy old boat over the shallows, and 
 succeeded at length in launching her into a deep narrow channel — a sort Qf little cataract or rapid — down which 
 we shot towards the dahibieh, cheered and comforted by the prospects of dinner. Excited by the near 
 approach to the lazy city of Thebes, our sailors rowed vigorously. In a fit of vulgar exultation, we loaded 
 up the forty barrels of our revolvers, and awoke the after-dinner Howadji who slumbered in the cabins, and 
 the echoes which slept in the grand old Temple of Luxor, with a rapid succession of forty bangs — gunpowder, 
 two drachms ; brown paper, two inches, well rammed down ! 
 
PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH, &e. 
 
 '0 HE annexed view exhibits one of the most interesting modern structures which claim the 
 attention of the English visitor in Jerusalem: it is the Protestant Episcopal Church, with the 
 British Consul’s residence on the left, and that of the Mission on the right. The church itself 
 is perhaps the most substantial and best specimen of recent construction which has yet been 
 completed there ; but it will be greatly surpassed by the Austrian Hospice, now in progress 
 under the vigilant superintendence of Count Pizzamano. The interior, as well as the exterior 
 of the church, is in the simplest and plainest style of Gothic architecture, and is used in common by 
 English and German Episcopalians — the former having their service in the morning, the latter in the 
 afternoon ; and they appear to be well attended by a devout and orderly congregation. This edifice, which 
 does great credit to the architect, considering the peculiar difficulties which builders in Jerusalem necessarily 
 have to contend with, is additionally interesting from its occupying — as is with great probability supposed — 
 the site of a portion of Herod’s palace. In sinking the foundations, which are based upon the solid rock, 
 many feet of rubbish had to be removed, and some curious remains of ancient construction were discovered, 
 for the particulars of which the reader is referred to J. W. John’s work on this church and the antiquities 
 of its site, and to Bartlett’s “Walks about Jerusalem.” In the progress of building the church, considerable 
 interruption was offered by the local Mohammedan authorities : these acts, however, appear to have been 
 greatly exaggerated, and at present their toleration is such, that the church and mission, so far from needing 
 the shelter and protection of the consular residence and flag under which they were erected, are now, from 
 want of space, desirous of being relieved therefrom ; and we found the official apartments of the Consul, and 
 the books and other collections of the Jerusalem Literary Society, of which the British Consul is President, 
 removed to an inconvenient neighbouring building. The mention of the rubbish resulting from the debris of 
 ancient buildings removed in the building of the English church, reminds us that, amongst the rubbish accumulated 
 on other parts of Mount Zion, small quadrangular bricks, of a light colour — the remains of tesselated pavement 
 — are very abundant. 
 
 The Austrian Hospice, to which we have alluded, will be a large and substantial building : it is probable 
 that nothing equal to it has been produced within the walls since the time of the Crusaders. Its foundations 
 required deep and extensive excavations, but it does not appear that many objects of interest were brought 
 to light. To procure the stone for this building, a very fair road, about a league in length, has been made 
 to some ancient quarries which had been re-opened for this purpose. The waggons, the only wheeled carriages 
 which we saw in use at Jerusalem, are the same which had formerly been employed for the Balaklava 
 railway. 
 
 Whatever difference ot opinion there may be as to the expediency of having a society expressly constituted 
 for the con\eision. ot Jews, there can be no doubt that a beneficial influence is exerted by the presence of the 
 good men and women connected with it, and more especially by the hospital which it maintains, under the 
 able management of Dr. Macgown and PI. Atkinson, Esq. Notwithstanding the shyness which difference 
 
 of religious opinion is too apt to create, an amicable co-operation has, in many instances, been the happy 
 result, and these excellent medical officers are on friendly terras with their Israelite brethren. The Christian 
 schools connected with the mission, as well as the schools for girls established and maintained by the liberality 
 of Sir Moses Montefiore, and that supported by funds bequeathed by a wealthy German for Israelite boys, are 
 also productive of manifest advantages, not merely to Jerusalem but to the neighbouring country. 
 
NAZARETH, FROM THE NORTH-WEST. 
 
 S there are modes of swindling in commerce which are almost respectable, and which by no 
 means subject the peculiar class of tradesmen who practise them to the penalties of the law — 
 so, in book-making, a kind of pilferage is largely and systematically practised, which is very 
 nearly creditable, inasmuch as it injures no one very much, and, if cleverly disguised, is called 
 
 research,” and redounds to the credit of the thief. To ensure admiration, one needs only 
 
 to acknowledge that the article is pilfered, and from whom. This I confess without 
 
 I am about to quote from Stanley a passage which contains quotations from several other authors : — 
 j “It is one peculiarity of the Galilean hills, as distinct from those of Ephraim or Judah, that they 
 contain, or sustain, green basins of table-land just below their topmost ridges .... such is the position of 
 
 They rise round it like the edge of a shell, to guard it from intrusion. It is ‘ a rich and beautiful field ’ in 
 the midst of these green hills, abounding in gay flowers, in fig-trees, small gardens, hedges of the prickly pear : 
 and the dense rich grass affords an abundant pasture. The expression of the old topographer, Quaresmius, 
 was as happy as it is poetical : — ‘ Nazareth is a rose, and like a rose has the same rounded form, enclosed by 
 
 Testament, Nazareth first appears as the retired abode of the humble carpenter.” 
 
 With regard to the “ Rock of the Precipitation,” I quote again from Stanley : — “ ‘ They rose,’ it is said 
 of the infuriated inhabitants, ‘and cast him out of the city, and brought him to a brow of the mountain 
 
 auro!/).’ Most readers, probably from these words, imagine a town built on the summit of a mountain, from 
 which summit the intended precipitation was to take place. This, as I have said, is not the situation of 
 Nazareth, yet its position is still in accordance with the narrative. It is built upon, that is, on the side of 
 a ‘ mountain,’ but the ‘ brow ’ is not beneath, but over the town ; and such a cliff (xpr)[xvog) as is here 
 implied, is to be found, as all modern travellers describe, in the abrupt face of the limestone rock, about 
 thirty or forty feet high, overhanging the Maronite Convent, at the south-west corner of the town.” 
 
 Now for my own story. The day which brings the traveller to Nazareth, finds him, in the early morning, 
 loading his equipage at Jenin (probably the ancient En-Gannim, Josh. xix. 21), a town of some present 
 importance on the other side of the great plain of Esdraelon. Here the governor furnished us with two Bedouins 
 as guides (some of the Bedouins are employed as irregular soldiers by the Turkish authorities), and we defiled 
 over the great plain ; at first through fields of corn, and then, for weary hours, through interminable tracts of 
 thistles and other rank weeds, evincing the native fertility of the soil, and stretching away, in one unbroken 
 level, almost to the horizon on the right and left. Before us were the mountains of Galilee, which we reached 
 at about 2 p.m., having been nearly six hours in crossing the plain. A scramble of two hours more up 
 the rough mountain side, almost without a track, brought us to the basin already described. Passing the 
 town, we encamped on its further side, close to the “ Well of the Annunciation,” — still frequented, throughout 
 the day, by numbers of the women of Nazareth. 
 
 Nazareth. Fifteen gently rounded hills ‘ seem as if they had met to form an enclosure ’ for this peaceful basin. 
 
 mountains as the flower by its leaves.’ The village stands on the steep slope of the south-western side of the 
 
 valley These are the natural features which, for nearly thirty years, met the almost daily view of 
 
 Him who increased in wisdom and stature within this beautiful seclusion. Unknown and unnamed in the Old 
 
 (etug ocppuog to u opoog), on which the city was built, so as to cast him down the cliff (wtts xaraxp7][j.vt(rai 
 
VIEW AT LUXOR 
 
 C^jpiufC^UXOR, reader, is at Tbebes, and Thebes, I need hardly say, is an ever present idea with the Nile 
 gfjg : u traveller, from the time that his dahibieh floats into the broad river from the dirty crowded 
 Y shore of Boulac, the port of Cairo : and as you listlessly watch the lazy tramp of your sailors, as 
 day after day they “ track ” your boat in the calm hot weather, or fly before the brisk 
 north winds, your fancy has abundant opportunity for speculation on the history of this 
 mysterious city of the past — its 
 
 
 “ Temples, palaces, and piles stupendous, 
 
 Of which the very ruins are tremendous." 
 
 Thebes was the ancient capital of Upper Egypt ; and the groups of antiquities here scattered over 
 a large district on both sides of the river, are of greater variety and interest than at any other single 
 spot in Egypt. We shall have abundant opportunity, in describing succeeding views, to speak of the 
 history and present aspects of its several divisions : in the meantime we give a map of the district, which will 
 bo useful throughout for reference. 
 
 [iK Q 
 
 
 j 
 
 - r 
 
 The great columns represented in my picture, with the expanded lotus-flower capital, will at once be 
 familiar to every Nile traveller ; many of whom I have no doubt, with myself, upon landing at Luxor, have 
 found their anxiety for news from home overpowering for a while their antiquarian enthusiasm, and have 
 hurried past the superb columns in hot haste to the temple of Mustapha-Aga, the native English consular 
 agent, for their letters ! Mustapha’s abode lies in the shadow on the right of the picture, and he sails into 
 his audience-chamber, in long silken gown and turban, makes his salaam, and hands you all his stock of letters, 
 thirty or forty of them, — you can take your choice. 
 
 The columns, of which there are twelve, in a double row, were probably erected by Amunoph III., about 
 b.c. 1500. They formed a peristyle of the great Temple, and are about eight feet in diameter, and some thirty 
 to forty feet high. The group of figures in the centre of the picture, are natives, who were quarrelling energetically 
 at the moment, and quite unconscious of my designs upon them. The picture was taken in about six seconds. 
 
BETHLEHEM, WITH THE CHURCH OF THE NATIVITY. 
 
 HE position of Bethlehem is so high, and the Convent of the Nativity, which forms an essential 
 part of the general view, is so much isolated, that for some time I vainly rode round and 
 '■> roun( l the town in search of a point from which I might convey, in a single picture, any 
 ; ■ comprehensive and satisfactory idea of the place. Perhaps the one which I eventually chose 
 is the best; it is about half a mile from the town as one descends towards Mar-Saba, and 
 the view illustrates with remarkable accuracy the following description by Stanley. Speaking 
 of the convent, he says : — “ It is an enormous pile of building, extending along the ridge of the hill from 
 west to east, and consisting of the Church of the Nativity, with the three convents — Latin, Greek, and 
 Armenian — abutting respectively upon the north-eastern, south-eastern, and south-western extremities. 
 Externally there is nothing to command attention beyond its size, the more imposing from the meanness and 
 smallness of the village, which hangs as it were on its western skirts.” Yet this view hardly does justice to 
 the village, which indeed is, for Palestine, a busy and considerable town of some 2000 inhabitants, who are 
 nearly all Christians. There is here a manufacture of pearl ornaments, and of other articles of native trade ; 
 and the streets, although narrow and tortuous, are cleaner than those of most other eastern towns. The women 
 of Bethlehem are, by consent of all travellers, very beautiful — I think I never saw so large a proportion of 
 beauty as amongst the girls and younger women — which no doubt strikes the traveller the more forcibly, from 
 the absence of the odious Moslem veil, to which he has probably been long accustomed. I could hardly suppress 
 a fanciful idea that this gift of beauty to the women of the place of Christ’s Nativity was a sort of heir-loom, 
 a lasting and delightful memento of the saintly Virgin, His mother. 
 
 The buildings on the left of my picture cover a cave containing a manger, which is shown as the actual 
 place of the Nativity, this is in the possession of the Roman Catholics — a Greek chapel on the spot where 
 
 the wise men presented their gifts — the tombs of St. Jerome and Eusebius — the cave in which the latter 
 
 was employed, during the greater part of fifty years, in making his translation of the New Testament. The 
 church above these caves was built by the Empress Helena, mother of Constantine. 
 
 Lord Nugent says, “ My impression is strongly in favour of the identity of the place shown as that of the 
 Nativity. Though there is no record of our Saviour, or his mother, or Joseph, having ever revisited Bethlehem 
 it is hard to suppose that the place where the shepherds worshipped, and the kings brought their gifts, and 
 the first act of our redemption was made manifest, could have been forgotten or neglected by those who, from 
 the first, had believed, or could have failed to be pointed out by them with the utmost reverence and care.” 
 
 Now, although I have nothing to say against the probability of this site, I do object, once for all, to the 
 
 foregoing argument, which is frequently urged with reference to traditionary sites. I imagine that the 
 contemporaries of these great events would be much more likely than future generations to overlook, and even 
 disregard, the precise localities of their occurrence, being absorbed and satisfied by the events themselves. 
 I do not suppose that the half-idolatrous interest which seized, during the middle ages, upon the “ Holy Places ” 
 of Palestine, was awakened during the earlier, and purer, ages of Christianity : when the minds of the believers 
 were fully and stirringly occupied by the living and persecuted spirit of the new faith. 
 
 A field is pointed out, about a mile to the east of Bethlehem, as the place where the shepherds were 
 apprized of the birth of the Saviour. Bethlehem is six miles to the south of Jerusalem, and stands at an 
 
 elevation ol some 2500 feet above the sea. Its situation is truly picturesque and beautiful. It is one of the 
 
 lew places in Palestine which will not disappoint the imaginative traveller. The sides of the rocky hills which 
 
 surround it are covered, as of old, with terraces well cultivated, and planted with the fig and the vine. 
 
SCULPTURES FROM TEE OUTER WALL, DENDERA. 
 
 N describing these sculptures, I have no intention to attempt more than a sort of catalogue of the 
 figures, and the attributes or qualities which they are supposed to have represented. Some of these 
 figures are very quaint, but however grotesque, they are all supposed to be emblematic of something, 
 though occasionally it is difficult to discover the significance of the emblem : look, for instance, at 
 that broken winged vulture, balanced so questionably on his legs — he is an emblem of victory. 
 
 It is generally agreed that the sculptures of the earliest period exhibit but eight deities, who 
 ad even then their regularly organized temple service, and an established priesthood. These 
 ' “ Caberi,” or “Great Ones,” were considerably multiplied during the middle period of Egyptian 
 j history by fanciful extensions of their attributes, for each of which some modification of form was 
 adopted ; and in the Greek and Roman periods they were further greatly extended, until their genealogies 
 and attributes became so intricate as to be, at the present day, well-nigh incomprehensible. 
 
 Of the eight original deities — 
 
 1 . The ram-headed figures are those of Kneph, probably the Great Spirit — the Creator ; for the Arabic 
 word “Nef,” signifies spirit, or breath. 
 
 2. The god with an outrageous head-dress, surmounted by two straight high “ostrich feathers,” is Amun, a 
 sort of king of the gods, and the original, perhaps, of the better known Jupiter Ammon. 
 
 3. The mummy-god, who carries sundry little matters, resembling fish-hook, latch-key, &c., the emblems 
 respectively of purity, stability, and life, is Pthah. He appears also as a deformed child (the Vulcan of the 
 Greeks). To him the scarabeus, or beetle, so frequent in Egyptian antiquities, was sacred. 
 
 4. The goddess with a vulture peeping from under her hood is Sate or Scti, the wife of Kneph. This, 
 I take it, is attribute enough for a lady. 
 
 5. The other lady, who carries upon her head a mitre, embedded in a corn-measure, the emblematic crown 
 of Upper and Lower Egypt, is Maut, the mother-goddess and the goddess of love ; in which character a figure 
 of a later time (who is then called Athor) is distinguished by a pair of spreading horns. A third personage 
 of similar character, who appears during the latest period, having a throne above her head, is named Isis. 
 
 6. Khem, or Khan, was the male counterpart of the foregoing goddess. He ever stands upon one leg, and 
 raises his single arm over his head. The learned dignify the Masonic emblem which bestrides his uplifted hand 
 as the “ flagellum.” 
 
 7. The lioness and cat-headed deity is Bubastis or Pasht (and afterwards Tefnu). She is the wife of 
 Pthah, and corresponds to the Greek goddess Diana. 
 
 8. The goddess who bears a bow and arrows and a distaff is Neith or Net (the Greek Minerva). She 
 presides — amongst an alarming variety of other matters — over spinning, and household duties, over the winds 
 and currents of air ; and she is represented, in some cases, as nursing a pair of young crocodiles ! 
 
 I do not expect to be able to convey to the mind of the reader any true idea of the strange feeling of 
 interest and wonder which the first views of these Nile sculptures inspire. For myself, I confess that although 
 I was of course prepared to see an abundance of hieroglyphic sculpture, I was, nevertheless, completely taken 
 by surprise. I was not at all prepared to realise such vivid contact with the very minds and feelings of the 
 men of 3000 years ago. Every one is familiar with the sort of interest one feels in seeing the autographs 
 of great men, long lost to earth : with such a feeling, but with a charming sense of mystery added, do we 
 regard the Egyptian sculptures. To stand in the very footmarks of the first men of time, and look upon 
 their genuine handiwork, is wonderfully suggestive of the men themselves. I shall have other opportunities 
 to speak of the manipulatory and artistic details of these sculptures. Savans tell us that Dendcra exhibits, 
 in its want of originality and spirit, the sad decadence of art at this period (b.c. 200 to 100) ; but whatever 
 may be said of its artistic demerits, Dendera is certainly inferior to no existing temple in the perfection 
 and beauty of its masonry, and the mere cutting of its sculpture. 
 

 
 
 
 
VIEW FROM THE ISLAND OF PHD, Hi, 
 
 LOOKING NORTH. 
 
 HE first Cataract of the Nile lies in the direction of the remote distance of our present 
 
 ' P* cture * ^ ie S ran * te formation, so conspicuous in the view, commences at Assouan, a town 
 
 offering their services — coffee, pipes, and compliments having been duly exhausted — the dragoman is desired to 
 hint that we are prepared for business. The sheik coolly remarks, by way of commencement, that our boat 
 
 is too large to go up the Cataract ! We reply that the old Gentleman knows as well as we do that she 
 
 has been up twenty times before. “Taib!” — but he cannot help us up for less than ten pounds — which of 
 
 course means five — the average sum paid for a boat of medium dimensions. This being arranged, after more 
 coffee and pipes, our visitors take their departure — to return at their option. They have often six or eight 
 engagements upon their hands at once, and we must wait our turn. 
 
 On the morning of the ascent, our boat was boarded by some ten or twelve of these Nubian semi-savages, 
 under the nominal command of the most hideous, cracked- voiced, sinister-looking savage of the lot, who soon 
 exhibited another feature of his character — he is a sot, a victim to English brandy, which he drinks neat. An 
 Egyptian in his ordinary state of stupor is sufficiently intolerable ; but when he becomes a drunkard, he is 
 indescribably disagreeable. Of course I gave strict orders that no brandy should be given him ; but I have 
 reason to think that our dragoman supplied him from his private stock, lest he should resent the affront, and 
 knock us to pieces on the rocks. Presently his huge bony face glowed with an unmeaning alcoholic energy ; 
 his great blood-shot eyes rolled about fiercely ; he threw off one scrap of his garments after another ; his 
 voice was hollow and husky, and his manner, although savagely determined, was alarmingly confused. But 
 the ship was under his charge, and something must be done — so off we went. Past the island of Elephantine 
 — now utterly despoiled of its once beautiful temple — away amongst masses of smoothly rounded granite, tumbled 
 together in most fantastic shapes ; the six miles from Assouan to the series of rapids or falls which constitute 
 the “ First Cataract,” is really a charming bit of sailing. 
 
 At length we drew up, iu company with four or five other boats, at the foot of the chief cataract, where 
 we were boarded by two or three other sheiks, each with his train of dependents, until we had probably thirty 
 or forty on board, and as many more were squatting about on the rocks, to assist in case of need. A rope was 
 attached to the bows of the boat, the other end was carried ashore, and thence commenced a series of plunges 
 wriggliugs, and thumps on the part of our craft, and of bluster, confusion, and noise upon that of our savages, 
 which would be perfectly indescribable, but for that concise and convenicut phrase, “ that it defies description.” 
 The Brandy-Sheik roared more hoarsely than ever ; he trembled with sham excitement ; he grasped a huge 
 stick, and belaboured the men who worked best with relentless idiotcy : he threw himself into the water 
 swam wildly about, scrambled on board again, and demanded more brandy, or he could not work in the water ! 
 For four hours was our wretched boat suffering under the inexpressibty clumsy manoeuvres of these sons of 
 
 Nature, who thumped her altogether needlessly upon the rocks until she leaked freely. For the great haul 
 
 where the water descends some three or four feet in a very narrow channel, at an angle of about 55° — we had 
 probably a hundred hands employed. The fiendish uproar, and the impotent bustle of this scene, would be 
 in the highest degree ludicrous, if it were not so insufferably provoking. A dozen English sailors, with a small 
 windlass, would take the boat up easily in half the time. Yet some travellers speak with raptures of the 
 “ savage faculty” displayed in the ascent! 
 
 of considerable trade, and of some 800 or 1000 inhabitants, situated immediately at the foot 
 (?'. c.. north) of the Cataract. 
 
 The traveller’s boat, in company with a long string of others, being moored at this place, 
 and the Sheik of the Cataract, with his train of assistants, having arrived for the purpose of 
 

ENTRANCE TO THE GREAT TEMPLE, LUXOR. 
 
 E ought to be very thankful to the man who furnishes a plan of such a place as Luxor. 
 I greatly admire the acumen and the minute acquaintance with the formation and 
 necessities of an Egyptian temple, which are essential for such a work. To restore the 
 original plan of Luxor appears to me to be a piece of comparative anatomical skill 
 equivalent to any of the feats of Cuvier. We have before us a skull very much injured, 
 
 and a few scraps of the gigantic shank-bones and vertebras ; and these are so much disjointed 
 
 ' and scattered that you would never imagine them to be parts of the same mysterious whole : yet 
 
 iM $ 
 
 fr Sir Gardner Wilkinson asserts them to be so. Here is his description : — “ Luxor, or Luksor, which 
 occupies part of the site of ancient Diospolis, still holds the rank of a market-town. Its name signifies 
 ‘ the Palaces,’ from the temple there erected by Amuuoph III., and Raineses II. The former monarch 
 built the original sanctuary and the adjoining chambers, with the addition of the large colonnade and the 
 pylon before it, to which Rameses II. afterwards added the great court, the pyramidal towers, and the obelisks 
 and statues. These, though last in order of antiquity, necessarily form the present commencement of the 
 temple, which, like many others belonging to different epochs, is not two separate edifices, but one and the 
 same building. 
 
 “ On each side of the entrance is a sitting colossal statue of Rameses II., now buried to the shoulders in 
 the earth and sand accumulated around them. Near the north-west extremity of the propyla another similar 
 colossus rears its head amidst the houses of the village, which also conceal a great portion of the interesting 
 battle scenes on the front of the towers. The area within, whose dimensions are about 190 feet by 170, is 
 
 surrounded by a peristyle, consisting of two rows of columns, now almost concealed by hovels and the mosques 
 
 of the village. 
 
 “ Passing through the pylon of Amunoph, you arrive at the great colonnade, the length of which, to 
 the next court, is about 170 feet. To this succeeds an area of 155 feet by 167, surrounded by a peristyle 
 of twelve columns in length, and the same in breadth, terminating in a covered portico of thirty-two 
 columns, 57 feet by 111. Behind this is a space occupying the whole breadth of the building, divided into 
 chambers of different dimensions, the centre one leading to a hall supported by four columns, immediately 
 before the entrance to the isolated sanctuary. Behind the sanctuary are two other sets of apartments, the 
 larger ones supported by colonnades, and ornamented with rich sculpture, much of which appears to have been 
 gilded.” 
 
 This description may appear complicated and interminable to the reader, but I can assure him that it is 
 wonderfully concise and intelligible compared with the impression which the traveller receives from an inspection 
 of the ruins. 
 
 The temple was dedicated to Amun, who is represented by the sculptures as addressing the king in the 
 following words : — “Thy government shall continue for millions of years, and we present thee with an eternal 
 pure life.” It is also stated that Rameses conquered the Chaldeans, and took 9000 prisoners. He is styled 
 “the Divine Protector, the Conqueror of Nubia. He has destroyed in a second ten millions, and has changed 
 the nations to nothing : no other conies like him.” 
 



NABLOUS, 
 
 THE “ SICHEM ” OF THE OLD TESTAMENT, AND THE “SYCHAR” OF THE NEW. 
 
 ICHEM, or Shechem, in the land of Moreh,— the place where Abraham sojourned (Gen. xii. (5), 
 and where Jacob bought a parcel of land from Hamor, the father of Shechem, which he 
 afterwards gave to Joseph (Gen. xxxiii. 19 ; Josh. xxiv. 32), — is to this day a pleasing proof 
 of the good taste and sound judgment of those venerable patriarchs in matters residential and 
 agricultural. 
 
 Stanley gives the following description of its features : — “ A valley green with grass, 
 olives ; gardens sloping down on each side ; fresh springs rushing down in all directions ; 
 a white town , embosomed in all this verdure [vide Photograph], lodged between the two high 
 which extend on each side of the valley, that on the south Gerizim, that on the north Ebal : 
 this is the aspect of Nablous, the most beautiful— perhaps it may be said the only very beautiful- 
 spot in central Palestine.” 
 
 Lord Nugent says “ Two hours from Hawarrah brings you to the entrance of this delightful vale, rich 
 with the freshest verdure, and towards the town, which stands at the further end, shaded with a profusion of 
 clustering trees. The bases of the two noble mountains that tower above this pass on either side are not 
 more than a quarter of a mile apart. The southernmost, Gerizim, is said, by the traditions of the country, to 
 be the mountain on which Abraham prepared for the sacrifice of his only son ; and here the children of Israel 
 were commanded to build an altar to the Lord, and the blessings of the law were pronounced with a loud 
 voice to the people from Gerizim, and its curses from Ebal.” 
 
 Jacob’s Well, where Jesus conversed with the woman of Samaria, is on the right, a mile or two before 
 you enter the town, and is now but a narrow triangular hole cut in the rock, and almost filled with stones. 
 Maundrell, in 1697, descended, and found a chamber and a second well directly under the first. It was then 
 105 feet deep, with 12 feet of water. 
 
 Nablous is thirty-four miles north of Jerusalem, and seven miles south of Samaria. It is now a thriving 
 town of some 10,000 or 12,000 inhabitants, with extensive manufactories of soap and other articles. The 
 Samaritans, of whom there are from 100 to 200, have here a small synagogue, where they preserve and 
 show to travellers — to the great worldly benefit of the priests — a copy of the Pentateuch on vellum, which 
 they assert to have been written by Abishua, the son of Phinelias, 3480 years ago. 
 
 The Scripture history of this place is briefly traced thus: — It was surprised and destroyed by Jacob’s 
 sons (Gen. xxxiii., xxxiv). After the conquest of the country, Shechem was made a city of refuge (Josh. xx. 7), 
 and one of the Levitical towns (Josh. xxi. 21). In the time of the judges Shechem became the capital of the 
 kingdom set up by Abimeleck (Judges ix.) ; but the inhabitants having rebelled, it was retaken and destroyed 
 by him (Judges ix. 34). It was again of importance in the time of Rehoboam, for he there gave the meeting 
 to the delegates of the tribes (1 Kings xii. 1) ; and it was Shechem which the first monarch of the new 
 kingdom made the capital of his dominion (1 Kings xii. 25). It existed during the exile, and continued for 
 many ages after the chief seat of the Samaritans, and of their worship, their sole temple being upon Mount 
 Gerizim, where massive ruins, perhaps of this temple, still remain. The city was taken, and the temple 
 destroyed, by John Hyrcanus, b.c. 129. 
 

IllgpSy ~ Pacha to meet him in conference, backed by about ten thousand soldiers. 
 
 rjB These potentates, as I afterwards learned, effected a meeting, and matters were understood to be 
 / amicably arranged. The Patriarch of the Coptic Church, being also the head of the Established Church 
 ' '■ 0 f Abyssinia, was subsequently sent by Said Pacha as an ambassador to the court of Theodosius, who 
 received him with much apparent distrust, and made a sort of state prisoner of him, keeping him strictly 
 guarded in his own immediate train. Then, suddenly summoning all his chief men, he demanded of his 
 prisoner, that if he were the Patriarch he professed to be, he should crown the Emperor, there and then, as 
 the deputed head of his church in Abyssinia; thus adding, by a stroke of wily policy worthy of a more 
 civilised monarch, a most powerful support to his newly-acquired temporal dominion ; for the reverence of the 
 eastern churches for their supposed spiritual leaders is very great. The Coptic Patriarch, who is himself an 
 unusually shrewd, intelligent, artful man, and a progressionist withal, was detained for many months at the 
 court of Theodosius, without being able even to communicate with his anxious friends at Cairo. But he has 
 at length been allowed to return, with a fund of anecdote and information as to the social and political 
 condition of a country which bids fair, under the rule of Theodosius, to rise in the scale of nations almost 
 as strangely and as rapidly as Egypt did under the able government of Mahommed Ali. 
 
 At Koroslco the Nile, whose course is almost uniformly south, takes a sudden bend to the north-west, and 
 in this bend, on the northern bank, are the temples of Amada and Wady Saboua. The former did not 
 afford me a picture,— it is exceedingly plain externally, and almost entirely buried by the drifted sand. 
 Its interior, however, contains some beautiful sculpture of the very early age of Osirtasin III., consequently 
 more than 3500 years old. Even the colours are quite fresh in some places, having been preserved by the 
 plastering of mud with which the early Christians concealed the emblems of idolatry. 
 
 Wady Saboua is thus described by Sir G. Wilkinson “ Saboua, so called from the ‘lions’ (andro- 
 sphynxes) of the dromos, is of the early time of Raineses the Great. It is all built of sandstone, with the 
 exception of the adytum, which is excavated in the rock. The dromos was adorned with eight sphynxes on 
 either side, and terminated by two statues with sculptured stela; at their back : to this succeeded the two 
 pyramidal towers of the propylon ; the area, with eight Osirida; figures attached to the pillars supporting 
 the architraves and roofs of the lateral corridors ; and the interior chambers, which are now closed by the 
 drifted sand. Amuure and Re were the chief deities, and from the worship of the god of Thebes, the town 
 bore the same name as that city — Amunei, or the abode of Amun.” 
 
 The reader will conjecture that the desolate figures which form my picture are the two statues which 
 terminated the dromos, and some of the mutilated bodies of the androsphynxes. The pylon of the temple is 
 rude, and very much dilapidated ; and it appeared to me that these figures were most impressive, standing 
 alone, as I have represented them, amidst the sultry stillness of the desert, whose remorseless sand-waves 
 are gradually stealing round, and engulfing them. 
 


FAQADE OF THE GEEAT TEMPLE AT ABOU SIMBEL, 
 
 ^.' IIE subterraneous works of the ancient Egyptians — such as the rock temples of Nubia, and 
 |j^)' tlie tombs of Thebes and of Lower Egypt — are quite as wonderful as the most celebrated 
 iffj. their structures, not excepting even the temples of Luxor and Philm. 
 
 The great rock temple of Abou Simbel, the facade of which is represented in the 
 Photograph, is situated about forty miles to the north of the Second Cataract, and is the most 
 southerly of the ancient monuments of Egypt usually visited by Europeans ; but they are to 
 
 be found extending as far south as Dongola, 1300 miles from the mouth of the Nile. 
 
 I am sure that to have stood — even thus far towards Central Africa — and to have gazed by the intense 
 
 light of a Nubian sun upon the fagade of this glorious temple, the broad river flowing at its base, the palm 
 
 groves beyond, and the deep yellow desert hills which close the distance, must have enriched the mind of 
 every one who has beheld the scene, and is possessed of a spark of imagination, with images of mingled 
 beauty, and grandeur, and romance, which will occasionally haunt through life his happiest and most 
 contemplative moments. The stillness and desolation of the very desert from which these noble evidences 
 of a populous antiquity are but half disentombed, will have heightened the mysterious sublimity of their effect 
 upon the mind ; and perhaps the traveller will often refer to the features of the figures of the fagade as the 
 only perfect combination of colossal size with ideal beauty which he ever beheld. 
 
 The temple is sculptured in the face of a sandstone rock, which runs sheer down to the river ; and here 
 the traveller who arrives “in season” usually finds a long line of “dahibiehs,” showing an abundance of 
 gaudy flags and pennants, and occasionally saluting with the customary “complement” of gunpowder the 
 arrival or departure of a comrade. 
 
 The new arrival, with the help of his opera-glass, observes Brown, Jones, and Robinson, with a party of 
 ladies (they have all been married since their continental tour), toiling through the deep sand to the entrance 
 
 of the temple ; also Lord Henry , and two other gentlemen, whom he remembers to have seen on the 
 
 shady side of Pall Mall, looking much cooler than they do at present ; and, as he watches their movements, 
 a great horror seizes him (in spite of his antiquarian enthusiasm) at the idea of exchanging his luxurious 
 cushions for the heavy climb up the steep evasive sand-slope, with the thermometer at 130°. However, the 
 effort must be made: he goes ashore, and arriving at the temple, reduces himself to a sedentary position, 
 and — emboldened by the example of the ladies — executes a glissade through the narrow entrance, excavated 
 by Belzoni, Irby, and Mangles, in the year 1817, into the great hall of the temple, where the scanty glim- 
 mering of daylight, added to that of his candle, reveals to him the eight colossal Osiridm figures, with arms 
 folded upon their breasts, and the beautiful sculptures which adorn the walls. “The Osiridse figures,” says 
 Sir G. Wilkinson, “are 17 feet 8 inches high, without the cap and pedestal.” To this grand hall succeeds 
 a second, with four square pillars supporting its roof ; a corridor and an “ adytum,” with two side chambers. 
 Eight other rooms open on the grand hall. The total depth of the excavation is about 200 feet. The temple 
 is of the time of Rameses II. (about 1400 years b.c.), of whom the colossal figures of the facade are probably 
 portraits. There were originally four of these, but the one on the left of the entrance has fallen away from 
 the face of the rock, and the uppermost on the right is buried to the chin in the drifted sand. These 
 figures are about 60 feet high ; the ears measure 3 feet 5 inches. The principal sculptures of the interior are 
 historical subjects relating to the conquests of its founder, and extend from the first to the thirty-fifth year 
 of his reign. 
 
BAALBEC. 
 
 GENERAL VIEW FROM THE SOUTH. 
 
 N order to enable our readers to judge of the points from which our views of Baalbec have been 
 taken, we have engraved a plan of the ancient city and of the temples, compiled principally after the 
 careful surveys of Wood and Dawkins. It has been conjectured that the entire plan of the temples 
 of Baalbec was not carried out ; and that it was contemplated to erect another building on the 
 northern side of the Great Temple, corresponding with the smaller structure. 
 
 I V I 
 
 A. The Flight of Steps, and the Portico, which is 260 feet long. It had 12 columns, which were, with the pedestals, 57 feet high. 
 
 B. Hexagonal Court, or Forum, 190 feet long, by 266 wide. 
 
 C. Quadrangular Court, 405 feet long, by 440 wide. 
 
 D. Great Temple, 290 feet long, by 160 wide. (The six columns shown in the view belonged to this temple.) 
 
 E. The smaller Temple, 225 feet long, by 118 wide. (This is the building in the photograph, against which the fallen column rests.) 
 
 F. The circular Temple, of which we shall give a view in a subsequent Part. It is 32 feet in diameter. 
 
 G. A Doric column. 
 
 H H. The City Walls, about 4 miles in circuit. 
 
 I. The City Gates. 
 
 On the left of our picture, in the basement of the Great Temple, and at a height of some thirty or 
 forty feet from the ground, are seen the three great stones which have excited the wonder of all travellers. 
 They have suffered innumerable measurements, which have resulted in fixing their dimensions, together 190 
 feet 8 inches in length ; separately, 63 feet 8 inches ; 64 feet ; and 63 feet. 
 
 The general scale of the buildings, and the distance from which my view has been taken, will be best 
 appreciated by comparing these measurements with the stones referred to in the picture. Besides these, 
 Dr. Wilson says that at the north-west corner are nine stones, which average 31 feet in length, 9 feet 7 inches 
 in breadth, and 13 feet in depth ; and one in the western wall, 69 feet in length, 13 in depth, and 18 feet in 
 breadth, containing 16,146 cubic feet of stone. This measurement gives the enormous weight of 1240 tons for 
 this one stone ; and supposing it to be broken up suitable for road-making, there would be sufficient to load 
 tour such vessels as are employed in bringing coals from the north to London, or to fill a string of one-horse 
 carts that would extend nearly five miles in length ! 
 
0S1EIME PILLARS AND FALLEN COLOSSUS, 
 
 AT THE MEMNONIUM, THEBES. 
 
 $ HAT a marvellously quaint period in the world’s history was the time of Rameses the 
 Great (about 1300 years before Christ), with its unlettered wisdom, its self-originated 
 arts, its vigorous but rude civilization ! Unacquainted with a remote Past, it laboured to 
 build up for itself an immortal Future. I wonder how many representations of himself— 
 statues and sculptures — the great Rameses executed in the course of his long and brilliant 
 reign of fifty-five years ; certainly some hundreds still exist in Egypt, and I suppose 
 there is hardly a capital in Europe which does not boast at least one of his portraits. His features 
 are calm and majestic, if not handsome, with an approach to the negro character, especially in the 
 lips. The great figures of the facade at Abou Simbel are his finest representatives, the faces being 
 ■ almost angelic in their calm and happy dignity of expression. 
 
 But the largest, and probably the most beautiful colossal statue ever produced, was erected by this 
 monarch at the Memnonium (more correctly called the Raraeseum), at Thebes. My Photograph gives the 
 principal fragment of this statue as it now lies, and as it has in all probability lain since the time of the 
 Persian conquest. This fragment (the size of which should be compared with the living figures grouped 
 around it) is merely the head and shoulders of the figure, which was of one single block of syenite granite, 
 aud is computed to have weighed about 900 tons. It represented the king seated upon a throne, in an attitude 
 of repose, and was probably intended to commemorate his victorious return from the warlike campaigns with 
 which an Egyptian monarch usually commenced his reign. David Roberts, in his splendid work, has bestowed 
 upon it a very respectable and recognisable profile ; but my picture shows that the face is so mutilated as 
 scarcely to leave a feature traceable. Its proportions, however, are the marvel. It weighed, when, perfect, 
 three times as much as the largest obelisk in Egypt, and was brought from a distance of about 100 miles. 
 History presents but one grander project for the gratification of a monarch’s vanity, viz., that of the architect 
 Dinocrates, who proposed to Alexander to cut Mount Athos into a statue of the king, holding in one hand a 
 city of 10,000 inhabitants, and from the other pouring a copious river into the sea. But if we are astonished 
 by the fait accompli of the Egyptian king, we are scarcely less perplexed as to the means employed for its 
 destruction. I am reminded of an inscription which is found upon some of the Nile temples, to the effect that 
 only he who succeeds in destroying it, will be a mightier man than the founder. The lower parts of the 
 Ramesean statue are entirely destroyed, and reduced to mere fragments ; the upper part (which is shown in 
 my picture), broken off at the waist, is merely thrown back upon the ground, aud probably remains as it first 
 fell. There are no marks of wedges in the fragments ; gunpowder seems to be the only means with which 
 we are acquainted that could produce similar results. Sir G. Wilkinson says, “ the fissures seen across the 
 head and in the pedestal are the work of a later period, when some of the pieces were cut for millstones by 
 the Arabs.” 
 


 
 
 
VIEW AT HEBRON. 
 
 IIERE arc no roads in Palestine, but merely mule-tracks between important places— the 
 /^3 “ beaten tracks ” in which travellers have been content to follow each other from year to 
 
 ft year, in order to “ do ” Palestine. Now Hebron is the most southerly place of mark in the 
 
 truthful idea of this interesting place. Leaving it in the morning, in no very appropriate frame of mind, I 
 passed the beautiful Wady Urtas, in which Solomon’s gardens were situated, and where now the small modern 
 Jewish agricultural mind is developing itself under the patronage of a benevolent European society. 
 
 Following the lead of a stone aqueduct, I came next upon the Pools of Solomon three magnificent tanks, 
 which still supply Jerusalem with water, by means of the very business-like aqueduct belore-named, of some 
 eight or ten miles in length. The Pools vary from nearly 400 to 600 feet long, by 170 to 240 feet wide. They 
 are lined throughout with excellent cement, and are in wonderful preservation. Hence succeeds a desolate and 
 barren tract of country, until, as you approach Hebron, you come upon the roughly paved road, upon which, 
 as my mule slipped and scrambled along, I could not help saying to myself — “ Peradventure, King David s 
 mule hath also slipped and scrambled.” 
 
 Between loose walls, and with a right proper and venerable vineyard on either hand, the traveller enters 
 Hebron — Hebron, — certainly one of the very first spots upon this “habitable globe” which taught mankind the 
 uses of that sweet word home ; which first prevailed, by its charm of cool luxuriant highland beauty and security, 
 over that strong propensity for everlasting rambling and unsettlement which was the natural consequence to 
 our race of the loss of Paradise. 
 
 Hebron was built seven years before Zoan, in Egypt (Num. xiii. 22). It was at first called Kirjath-arba, 
 from Arba, the father of Anak (Gen. xxiii. 2) ; also Mamre, probably after Abraham’s Amoritish ally (Gen. 
 xxiii. 19). There are still two pools in Hebron, one of which at least existed in the time of David, and was 
 probably the “ Pool in Hebron” over which he hanged up the assassins of Ishbosheth (2 Sam. iv. 12) ; it is still 
 called “ Birket-el-Sultaim,” or “the King’s Pool.” Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob spent much of their lifetime 
 in this neighbourhood, and from hence the patriarchal family departed for Egypt (Gen. xxxvii. 14). On the 
 return of their descendants, Joshua took the city, and gave it to Caleb, who expelled the Anakim (Josh. x. 
 36, 37). It was afterwards made a city of refuge, and assigned to the priests and Levites (Josh. xx. 7). 
 David reigned in Hebron seven years and a half, and it was here that he was anointed king over all Israel. 
 In succeeding ages it underwent many vicissitudes of fortune, and contains now probably about 10,000 
 inhabitants, a large proportion of whom are Jews. The cave of Machpelah, where the bodies (probably 
 embalmed) of the Patriarch Abraham and his family were entombed, is enclosed by a Mohammedan mosque, 
 from which Christians are rigorously excluded. The locality of this cave has been almost universally esteemed 
 by travellers to be one of the most authentic in Palestine ; and I do not know that any one has questioned 
 the probability that the very mummies of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Leah, still rest 
 within it. The part of the town represented in my view is the western or Jewish quarter. Lord Nugent 
 says — “The Jewish inhabitants of the place seem to be living prosperously, and on good terms with the 
 Mohammedans, and to carry on a fair trade with their own brethren and the Christians in the adjacent parts 
 of Judea, in earthenware and coarse cloth ; wine, which is not bad ; oil, which is good : a sort of ardent spirit, 
 which is detestable ; and the medicine used in England for coughs under the name of paregoric elixir.” 
 
 Hi fe. Holy Land. I “took” it from Jerusalem, returning tliitker after three days. Passing the 
 
 ,i tomb of Rachel, — a very probable traditionary site,— I encamped for the first night at Bethlehem, 
 where I spent the best part of my time in galloping frantically round the town, in the vain 
 
 search for a point of view from which 1 might convey to the British public something like a 
 
PEABAOH’S BED,” ISLAND OE PE3L.fi 
 
 HILiE is the most beautiful thing in Egypt ; and the temple, absurdly called Pharaoh’s Bed, is 
 the most beautiful thing upon the island. I flatter myself, too, somewhat upon the quality 
 of my Photograph,— light transparent shadows, sweet half-tones, oh discriminating Public! 
 It is true that the temple outdoes the Tower of Babel, not only “reaching unto the heavens,” 
 but robbing the picture of well-nigh all its sky — that feature so essential to the picturesque in 
 landscape. But what could I do ? I must give that scrap of water, and the Nile boat (a favourite 
 anchorage for travellers’ dahibieks, this nook), and I could not falsify the height of the bank, as I see 
 most artists have done, to suit the proportions of my picture. 
 
 I have a great mind to write some verses ; certes, if I contemplated an epic, I should establish 
 myself upon the Island of Philm to write it. It is just one of those places which one is sure that the shades 
 of the Muses must haunt, — so beautiful, so still (there are now no inhabitants upon the island), so dreamy 
 yet so richly suggestive. The fact is, that very little that is appropriate to the special subject of my picture 
 can be said in plain prose, — unless, indeed, I had a genius for architectural detail, and a frantic love of feet 
 and inches ; which I rejoice, for thy sake, dear Public, I have not. Yet, let me see ; the building is 
 hypmthral, — that is, its design did not contemplate a roof. What a charming compliment is this to the fair 
 cloudless, maiden sky, which always smiles over this delicious clime ! It was built by a Ptolemy, or a Cmsar 
 so that it is only about two thousand years old ! No wonder that it looks so fresh ! — and yet, oh wrong- 
 headed early-dynasty man, would not even twenty hundred years in any other climate under heaven have 
 accumulated some soil and stains — investing the pile with the sombre grey and green livery of antiquity, 
 and gnawing the soft smooth sandstone into a condition resembling that of an old ripe Stilton cheese ? But here, 
 on the confines of Nubia, where there is no smoke, no damp, not even dew, the glorious and unique temple 
 looks literally as clean and fresh as it did the year it was completed. There is no sculpture upon it. 
 Beneath the temple may be seen the remains of a river-wall and quay, which extended nearly round the 
 island. 
 
 The dahibieh here represented, being on her downward voyage, is despoiled of her greatest ornament — the 
 towering and picturesque lateen sail, the long “yard” of which is now lashed over the whole length of the 
 ship. This boat cost our party thirty pounds per month, including the wages of the Rais and ten men, who “ find 
 themselves.” The pioneers of what is now the “Nile excursion,” were accustomed to sink their boats for a few 
 days, in order to rid them of unwelcome tenants ; but the dahibiehs now-a-days are smart and cleanly — often 
 luxurious, some few having, besides excellent canteens, &c., very fair libraries of European books, and even 
 pianofortes ! 
 
THE TOWN AND LAKE OF TIBERIAS, FROM THE NORTH. 
 
 T is early morning, at Nazareth, at' the old camping ground, near the well of the Virgin. The tents 
 are down — the men busy dividing the loads for the mules, which stand by, drowsily warring with 
 the flies, whisking their tails, tossing the jingling bells about their heads, and peevishly stamping 
 with their fore feet. The Bedouin who is to take me to Tiberias, vid Mount Tabor, is squatting 
 
 upon the ground at a little distance, smoking a short chibouk, with a dirty and faded cofeieh, or 
 huge fringed handkerchief of yellow and red Damascus silk over his head and shoulders. His face 
 
 either their faces or their clothes). He has a short black beard and moustache, a stealthy cat-like expression, 
 and an eye full of cowardly cunning and distrust. His horse stands by, picketed to his spear — a true Arab 
 steed — but not at all the sort of thing which figures in romance. I will describe him : a small, dark brown 
 Irisk-looking animal — plenty of blood, and pretty well of bone, but amazingly little flesh ; some rude 
 mathematical figures burned into his “off” shoulder; head rather “light,” neck wofully so ; no “crop,” but 
 a shoulder like the hump of a camel ; tail cut square, Melton-Mowbray fashion, but with a little tuft left 
 long in the centre ; the effect truly ridiculous — the ensemble as Dick Turpinish, gipsyish, hedge-bottomish a 
 vagabond of a beast as you would wish to see matched even with a Bedouin ! 
 
 And now my guide slings his long matchlock over his shoulder, and throws himself into the high-pommelled 
 Turkish saddle, out-flanked by dirty blue rags and shabby dangling red tassels, and moves off with his knees 
 almost up to his chin, and his preposterous old red morocco boots instinctively and incessantly swinging to 
 and from his horse’s sides, so as to inflict at each step a gentle dig with the flat, sharp-cornered stirrup. 
 I follow at a smart “foot’s pace” up and down those monotonous hills, until we reach the base of Mount 
 Tabor, which rises in singularly isolated beauty to the height of about a thousand feet. Its sides are covered 
 with stunted evergreen oak and other timber, and on the summit are the ruins of chapels (for Mount Tabor 
 has been erroneously held to be the Mount of the Transfiguration) and of Roman fortifications. The view 
 although very extensive, I thought had been rather over-lauded by some travellers. Descending, you pass 
 through an undulating, uncultivated, but park-like country, covered with long grass, and studded thinly 
 with small timber : then between two ruined forts, probably Saracenic, through corn-land, until, as the sun 
 is sinking in the west, far beneath you, the town and lake of Tiberias break upon the sight — a calm, lovely, 
 sacred landscape. The fields of ripe corn, stretching from my feet to the shores of the lake, were very rich 
 and yellow ; the lake was very still and very blue ; the mountains of Moab, although monotonous in their 
 outline, were soft and mellow in their colouring, and, in the far north, over the purple hills of Galilee at a 
 distance of some forty miles, rises the snowy head of Mount Hermon : truly, it is a lovely scene ! 
 
 My view is taken from a point immediately above the north-west corner of the town. It embraces a 
 tower of the Roman castle, now partly in ruins (and a piece of modern brick wall, with which I would have 
 given anything in reason to have been able to play the artist, and omit), the greater part of the present town, 
 and the southern bay of the lake. Near the point of this bay is a little white speck, marking the site of the 
 hot springs and baths, which have been celebrated from time immemorial for their healing virtues. The water, 
 which is excessively salt and bitter, rises at a temperature of 140° Falir. The present building was erected by 
 Ibrahim Pacha, in 1833. 
 
 is no particular colour, but resembles a piece of a well-worn saddle (the Bedouins never wash 
 

THE HALL OF COLUMNS, KARNAO. 
 
 is easier, methinks, to write an article for the most insignificant of my subjects than for Karnac: 
 ^ * s P er ^ ec ^y ^°P e ^ ess to attempt to do it justice either by the camera or the pen. I can tell 
 
 Jpa you, it is true, how many columns are standing in the Great Hall, and I can give you their dimen- 
 
 V^ L sions ; but as for transporting you even in imagination to the very spot — as for making you feel 
 
 JmU' the witchcraft of the place, its oppressive grandeur, its dark mysterious interest, the thing is 
 
 Ifcfyy totally impossible. I am even ashamed of my view, it is so thoroughly inadequate to the subject : 
 |(|£| but the fact is, that the pillars are so strangely crowded together, and their height is so great, as 
 n to render it quite impossible to obtain a photograph within the hall itself. The same remark applies 
 
 ' to the porticoes of all the Egyptian temples, which are, upon the whole, their most beautiful and striking 
 
 features. In justice to these glorious ruins, I am bound to confess that these, as well as most of the interiors, 
 I have not been able to illustrate. 
 
 From our present point of view, only about two-thirds of the height of the columns is seen, in consequence 
 of an immense accumulation of debris which intervenes. On approaching the hall from this side, the feeling 
 is one of disappointment : it resembles the Pyramids in this respect, — that it is not until one descends to 
 their very bases — not until one stands actually amongst them — that their unparalleled magnificence fills the 
 mind. 
 
 In connection with other views, I shall speak of the general plans of the principal buildings at Karnac : 
 I now confine myself to a description of the Great Hall, or, as it is commonly called, the Hall of Columns. 
 It measures 329 feet by 170 ; across the centre stands a double row of pillars, six on each side ; their 
 height is 66 feet, without the pedestal and abacus, and they are 12 feet in diameter. I suppose that the total 
 height of the superstructures which they support is not less than 100 feet. On each side of these, ranged in 
 lines, and standing, I think, not more than 6 or 8 feet apart, are 122 others, each 41 feet 9 inches high, and 
 27 feet 6 inches in circumference. There is no roof, but the pillars are connected by single blocks of stone, 
 of prodigious dimensions. The two great pillars shown in my Photograph, standing at the eastern extremity 
 of the hall, were partly built into the outer wall, as appears from the stones on this side having been left 
 rough for that purpose. Sir G. Wilkinson says that the lintel stones of the portal which stood between them 
 were 40 feet 9 inches in length. This hall was commenced by Osirei, and finished by his son .Raineses the 
 Great, about 1400 years before Christ. All the pillars and the walls, both externally and internally, are 
 completely covered with sculpture— some of it in bas-relief— in the most finished style of this the finest period 
 of Egyptian art, and it was all originally brilliantly coloured ; not much, however, of this colouring now 
 
 remains. 
 

DAMASCUS. 
 
 RMIT me, 0 gentle Public, a short and pertinent philosophical disquisition. 
 
 It is sometimes with me a subject of amusing reflection to compare the well-remembered 
 ctures, which the descriptions of travellers had painted upon my fancy, with the impressions 
 flch the realities themselves have subsequently produced. Damascus, for instance, still 
 ay memory the two aspects almost equally vivid, but how different! I do not know that 
 quite fair to estimate the graphic power or the truthfulness of a writer’s descriptions by 
 of coincidence between these two pictures, because the colour and much of the form 
 [ J of the ima g in ary landscape must necessarily be due, to a great extent, to the peculiar tone of the reader’s 
 1 j mind ; but I can scarcely believe that all the false colouring in the present instance is chargeable to 
 
 myself. Probably we must look for the cause, not so much in the actual falsity of what travellers have 
 written, which is too often only the pleasant and romantic view of the subject, as in the studied suppression 
 of that large portion perhaps often one-half of the entire coup d'atil — which is either commonplace or positively 
 displeasing. And is it not because this latter element is revealed by Photography to an extent to which we 
 are unaccustomed in art, that its effect is rarely quite gratifying to the eye ? I fear that my pen must sometimes 
 add to this effect, both for the sake of consistency, and because my avowed object and desire is to convey 
 
 truthful impressions, rather than simply to amuse the intellect or to charm the fancy. Damascus, then, upon 
 
 the whole, disappointed my somewhat extravagant expectations. I had imagined a forest of minarets, as in 
 Cairo and Constantinople, but my view displays almost the only mosque in the city. The splendid mansions 
 of the luxurious Damascus, overlaid with mosaics, and sparkling with fountains, resolve themselves into the 
 rickety fabrics revealed in the Photograph, mysteriously tacked together with scraps of lath and timber, 
 and plastered with that hot yellow mud. It is true that the interior courts of some of these wretched-looking 
 tenements are fantastically brilliant and splendid ; the mosaics are there ; the tinsel and the fountains are there : 
 but be satisfied, 0 European luxuriast, to admire and enjoy them at a distance. Peep in ; just catch the 
 coup d ceil, and retire ; or, if determined to linger, throw thyself in dreamy blissfulness upon a divan, and 
 
 listen to the tinkling of the fountain, and gaze with half-closed eyes at the opposite side of the court. 
 
 Scrutinize not too closely the painting of that balcony ; fret not thyself in any wise about the jointing of the 
 marble pavement ; attempt not, I beseech thee, to square those door-panels or window-frames with the 
 straight-edge of thine eye (in the East there are no straight lines, no squares, no circles) ; the shade is welcome, 
 the green of the orange and rose-trees is refreshing ; blue and gold are beautiful colours ; believe, smoke, and 
 be happy ! 
 
 Again, “ the oldest city in the world ” presents few or no traces of high antiquity ; one of its chief relics is 
 the Bab-es-shurky, or East GJ-ate. It is evidently of Roman times, as also is the square minaret or tower above 
 it, the interior presenting excellent masonry of large, well-jointed stones; but it has been cemented and 
 whitewashed externally, according to Moslem taste. This gate is the eastern terminus of the street usually 
 regarded as the one “called Straight,’ in which St. Paul lodged. It has now various names in different 
 parts of its course, which is in a tolerably direct line from the Bab-es-shurky to one of the western gates. 
 Mr. Porter (the able author of “Five Years iu Damascus”) has traced the remains of a colonnade such as 
 frequently adorned the principal thoroughfare of a Roman town ; and, if I remember rightly, he told me that 
 although it does not take exactly the line of the traditional “ straight street,” it is yet so nearly identical, 
 that he does not quarrel with the nomenclature. From the tower of the East Gate may be obtained one of 
 the best bird s-eye views of the city, and from a roof near this point my present view was taken. The “ bird’s- 
 eye view, although strikingly oriental in its character, is singularly monotonous ; the flat roofs are plastered 
 with clay, which painfully reflects the glare of the eastern sun. 
 
BAALBEC: 
 
 DISTANT VIEW OF THE SIX COLUMNS OF THE GREAT TEMPLE. 
 
 HE word Baalbec — in the Syrian language “The City of Baal, or the Sun” — was trans- 
 lated by the Greeks into Heliopolis, by which it was known until, in modern times, it 
 
 mML 
 
 iffi- recovered its original Syriac name. 
 
 ^ ’ Baalbec has no authentic history. There can be no doubt that, from a very remote period, 
 
 it was the seat of the worship of Baal, and thus would in all probability possess a massive 
 
 ' "^a***^ ; and magnificent temple. It is probable that the “ Baal-gad,” mentioned in the book of 
 Joshua (xi. 17), is identical with Baalbec. Speculations respecting the builders of the later 
 temples have been numerous and conflicting. I have little hesitation in attributing the buildings, of which 
 the existing ruins are the remains, to the Romans ; and I account for the enormous size of some of the 
 stones of the substructures, as I believe most recent travellers have done, by the supposition that they formed 
 parts of the earlier temples. 
 
 The only historical authority for the building of the temples of Baalbec is that of John of Malala, from 
 whom we learn that Elius Antoninus Pius built a great temple to Jupiter at Heliopolis, in Phoenicia, which 
 was one of the wonders of the world: but Julius Capitolinus, who wrote the life of the emperor, does not 
 mention the Temple of Heliopolis. Wood and Dawkins, who appear to have searched carefully for early 
 records of Baalbec, argue that, since no mention is made of its temples by any Greek authors, from the period 
 of Alexander’s conquest until the time of Pompey, they cannot therefore be of Greek origin ; all the known 
 Grecian structures, although much inferior, being spoken of, or greatly lauded. 
 
 Macrobius says that in the city called Heliopolis the Assyrians worshipped the sun with great pomp, 
 under the name of Heliopolitan Jove, and that the statue of their god was brought from a city in Egypt, also 
 called Heliopolis ; and he proceeds to show that this statue represented both Jupiter and Baal. It was of 
 gold, and held in its right hand a whip, and in its left a thunderbolt, together with ears of corn. Baalbec 
 was celebrated as a place of divination : Trajan consulted its oracle upon the success of his Parthian 
 expedition. 
 
 From the reverses of several Roman coins, it is probable that Heliopolis was constituted a colony by 
 Julius Cffisar ; and upon coins of Septimus Severus we find its temple, having, like it, ten columns in front, 
 with the legend — “ Col. Hel. Rom;e. Colonia Heliopolitana Jovi optimo Maximo Heliopolitano.” Constantine 
 is said by Abulfaragius to have built a temple here ; but whilst he only closed the Pagan temples, Theodosius 
 destroyed some, and converted the great and famous temple of Jupiter into a Christian church. 
 
 Oriental writers describe Baalbec as a place of great wealth and importance up to the time of the 
 invasion of the Moslems ; indeed, when, after a courageous defence, it capitulated to them, the ransom exacted 
 by the conquerors is said to have been 2000 ounces of gold, 4000 ounces of silver, 2000 silk vests, and 1000 
 swords, together with the arms of the garrison. In a.d. 748 it was sacked, and the principal inhabitants put 
 to the sword by the Caliph of Damascus ; and it appears never to have recovered from this blow, but, on the 
 contrary, to be gradually sinking into utter oblivion. Its inhabitants, who in 1751 are said to have been 5000, 
 do not now, in all probability, exceed 1000 in number. 
 

RUINED MOSQUE, AND DISTANT VIEW OE PIIIL/E. 
 
 HE strip of alluvial land on each side of the Nile, which in Lower Egypt — that is, north 
 as ^ ar as Cairo — averages perhaps from two to three miles in breadth, becomes 
 i l contracted, when one enters Nubia, to the merest shred, and not unfrequently is altogether lost, 
 
 t A ' the desert sand, or rock, running down on both sides to the water’s edge. And the villages, 
 wHicli were so numerous, although hardly diversifying the level mud banks of the river by their 
 low hovels of the same material, are now few and far between. At Phil®, the Rais who had charge 
 of the boat in Lower Egypt is superseded in command by a native of the upper country. The Nubian, to whom 
 we now resigned ourselves, was a young man of some three or four and twenty, very black, very slender, and 
 as straight as an arrow, — a splendid specimen of a harmless savage. He seemed to be awake day and night, 
 was vigilant and taciturn, and ran us through the most rocky and intricate part of the Nubian river at a 
 dashing pace, all through a long blowy night. At the second cataract he plunged into the stream where 
 it was rushing fiercely between the rocks, and from the heights above we could see his lithe form 
 grappling with the stones at the bottom, and feeling for fish under the ridges ; and then, after an amazing 
 time, the black amphibious creature emerged to our element. But I introduced him because he was a native of 
 the village of Mishdd, and went ashore at the spot whence m} r view is taken, to take leave of his family. 
 Here is a ruined mosque, one of the oldest in Egypt, and perhaps the only existing one, whether in repair or 
 in ruin, in the whole of Nubia ; for the natives, although professed Mohammedans, are virtually heathens — the 
 greater part of them not being acquainted with any of the observances and requirements of their professed 
 religion. Mishdd is situated on the eastern bank of the river, about three miles south of the Island of 
 Phil®, which is seen in the distance, with the temple called Pharaoh’s Bed, and one of the pylons of the Great 
 Temple, distinguishable upon it. The picture being almost an instantaneous one, the w r aves or ripples upon the 
 river are preserved, although perhaps somewhat at the expense of the deeper shadows. 
 

SCULPTURED GATEWAY, KARNAC. 
 
 thou already forgotten, 0 reader, that we have given on a previous page a sketch map of Thebes ? 
 I recommend frequent reference to this map, because I recollect that, as I approached that 
 celebrated capital of yore, on the tip-toe of expectation, my mental gyrations with regard to 
 its geography were painfully ludicrous. Karnac, Luxor, the Memnonium, Medinet-Haboo, 
 Goorneh— each and all first appeared to me to be on one side of the river, then on the 
 other : now, Thebes, the city, was on the site of Karnac, and presently it was miles away 
 at Medinet-Haboo ; until at length, absorbed in contemplation of the temple ruins, I well-nigh forgot 
 that a mighty city, quite independent of these suburban embellishments, had existed at all. Let us 
 stand, therefore, upon the principal site of the ancient city, of which scarcely a vestige remains. We 
 are on the western bank of the river (the right-hand side when ascending), looking north towards Cairo, 
 alluvial plain, of some twenty square miles in extent, bounded on each side by limestone hills, and 
 
 intersected by the river, spreads all around. Immediately in front of us is the old temple of Goorneh, 
 scarcely peeping out of the tamarisk groves which surround it, and indeed being the least pleasing of the ruins 
 of Thebes. Bearing round to the left, until the eye reaches the mountains, we see opposite Goorneh the 
 entrance to the Talley of the Tombs of the Kings. Further to the left, on the slope of the barren hills— here 
 covered with innumerable caves and mounds, the evidences of ancient sepulture-stand the ruins of the temple 
 called the Memnonium, or Bameseum. Behind us, still following the western hills, is the temple palace of 
 Medinet-Haboo, covering a wonderful space of ground, but almost buried in the mud ruins of a deserted Arab 
 town. Then, in the plain, still behind, but nearer to us, stand the two prodigious statues of Mernnon. Now, 
 passing over the river, close to its banks on the south, we see the Temple of Luxor, and the considerable 
 
 modern village, with its mosque, which has grown up about it: and lastly, wheeling round to our original 
 position, we see at a great distance in the north, towards our right hand, towering over extensive groves of 
 dark green palms, the ruins of Karnac. 
 
 Returning to our boat at Luxor, I consider that we are in a position to land and start fair for 
 Karnac. And whilst our donkeys are nimbly plying their patient, “many twinkling feet” over the cultivated 
 land, for the first mile of our journey, I will tell you that Karnac was originally the site of one or two 
 modest, square-pillared temples, built, perhaps, about the time of Osirtasin I., some 1800 years before our 
 era, and a little before the arrival of Joseph in Egypt. To these, succeeding monarchs, each endeavouring 
 to surpass his predecessors in the magnitude and splendour of his monuments, built and added, until the entire 
 group of sacred buildings embraced five or six distinct temples, which were finally surrounded by a vast crude 
 brick wall, enclosmg about two square miles of ground. In this wall were placed, by the Ptolemies, or Greek 
 kings of Egypt (b.c. 300 to b.c. 14), four magnificent gateways, of the most beautiful of which— the one which we 
 are now approaching from Luxor— I stop to give a Photograph. But I should premise that we have advanced 
 for 200 or 300 yards through a dromos, or avenue of recumbent sphynxes, now all mutilated and headless. 
 The block on the left of the gateway in the picture represents one of them. They had the heads of rams 
 and a figure of the lung before the fore feet. Such an avenue once led to each of the principal gateways 
 of the sacred enclosures, one of them being continued as far as Luxor, about a mile and a half. I judge 
 this beautiful pylon, or gateway, to be about 60 feet high : it was erected by Ptolemy Euergetes, a.d. 246. 
 Dr. Brutseh gives the following translation of its principal inscription “ The king, the son of the brothers 
 of gods, who has been chosen by the sun, and is the living portrait of Amun, the son of the sun, the lord of 
 
 diadems, the immortal Ptolemais, the beloved of the god Ptath, has erected this door as his monument for 
 
 his sublime father, Amun Ba, the lord of the throne of worlds, the first in Thebes,— the great god, the lord 
 of heaven, of earth, of water, and of mountains. He has made the wings of this door from sandal-wood, the 
 
 bars of pure gold, and all the nails of iron. Euergetes the First has dedicated this door not only to Amun Ba, 
 
 but also to the god' Chonsu, the son of Amun, and the goddess Maut.” 
 

VIEW OE GIRGEH, UPPER EGYPT. 
 
 HERE arc a few towns in Upper Egypt which boast of a mosque or two, besides the usual 
 
 complement of ruined houses and heaps of filth and rubbish ; and some of these towns, 
 amongst which especially are Girgeh and Manfalout, have been imprudently perched upon the 
 high mud banks, just where an abrupt sweep of the river would seem, to European eyes and 
 
 ! brains, to make their engulfment in that encroaching stream a matter of ultimate, and 
 
 once appertained, has fallen, along with a considerable part of the old town, into the river. It has been 
 said that many of the temple-ruins are liable to the same fate, but I am convinced that this is not the case : 
 I do not recollect one temple which has suffered for many years past, or which is in danger of suffering for 
 many, many years to come, from this cause. 
 
 The habitations of the Nile peasantry are scarcely better than the hovels of savages ; they are mere huts 
 built of sun-dried Nile mud, perhaps ornamented at top with a few tiers of earthenware jars, or tubes, open 
 at each end, like pieces of draining-pipe ; or with some fantastic arrangement, in which pottery pigeon-holes 
 and the boughs of trees are built into towering mud cones, resembling sugar-loaves, the habitats of innumerable 
 flocks of pigeons. At Girgeh, three shots, simultaneously fired by some of our party, brought down fifty-four 
 pigeons, which were quickly dispatched by our crew. The owners of the birds seemed rather pleased than 
 otherwise when we shot them. It seems to have become with them a sort of instinctive habit to rear a 
 preposterous number of these birds, of which they made little culinary use, and which devour no mean per- 
 centage of their ripe crops. There are some “ pigeon villages ” on the Delta, and one or two in the upper 
 country, which are simply an assemblage of huge mud sugar-loaves — every house being shaped thus, and the 
 upper half being inhabited solely by the feathered portion of the family. 
 
 The huts in the foreground of my picture are composed of Doura straw, and are the temporary portable 
 homes of a troupe of the Gawazee, or dancing girls ; they were here on the occasion of some fair or festivity. 
 My camera was surrounded by scores of idlers, and innumerable half-naked children, from whom, and the 
 clouds of impalpable, fetid dust which they delight in stirring up, I made, the reader will imagine, a precipitate 
 and joyful retreat. 
 
 not very remote, certainty. Accordingly, the mosque to which the minaret in my picture 
 

GRANITE OBELISK AND LOTUS COLUMN, KARNAC. 
 
 HEN one is fairly into “ the thick ” of the monuments of Thebes, as you are when 
 you stand in the midst of the ruins of the Granite Sanctuary, which this “ lotus column” 
 once embellished ; — when you are here, I say, I recommend you to dismiss the principle 
 of wonder altogether, or you will do nothing but wonder. You will forget to inquire what 
 particular Pharaoh raised this or that monument : your judgment will not be sufficiently 
 cool to recognise, in the quaint figures before you, the evidences of the c: finest period 
 of Egyptian art and as to the plan of the building, it will never occur to you that the pitiable 
 and perfect chaos of splendid ruin around you ever had any plan. Thanks, however, to the practical mind 
 of Sir G. Wilkinson, I am able to quote from him as follows. After describing the court in front of the 
 Hall of Columns, he says : — “ The next court contained two obelisks, the one now standing being 92 
 feet high, and 8 square. Passing between two dilapidated propyla, you enter another smaller area, succeeded 
 by a vestibule, in front of the granite gateway of the towers that form the fagade of the court before the 
 Sanctuary, which is of red granite, divided into apartments, and surrounded by numerous chambers of small 
 dimensions.” This Sanctuary Sir G. Wilkinson considers was originally of sandstone, and even dated before the 
 time of Osirtasin I., but that Thothmes III. (about 1500 b.c.) was the monarch who rebuilt it in this splendid 
 material, syenite, or red granite. 
 
 I believe that this obelisk is the most beautiful in Egypt. It will be observed that it has only one 
 row of hieroglyphics on each side, and is said to have been erected by a certain queen, Amun-neit-gori 
 (Nitocris ?), about 3300 years ago, and about the time of the (light of Moses from Egypt. Its height, as 
 before stated, is 92 feet, of one block of syenite granite, — and consequently was brought from Syene, a 
 distance of about 100 miles. In the quarries at Syene still lies, in situ, an obelisk of nearly similar 
 proportions ; and here may be observed the manner in which these blocks were cut. In many instances 
 
 the well-known method seems to have been adopted of inserting a long line of wooden wedges, which being 
 saturated with water, split off the block by their pressure in swelling ; trenches to receive the water may 
 be observed along the line of the wedge-holes. The “ Lotus Column ” is an exquisite piece of work ; the 
 long slender stalk, and graceful (lower of the lotus, were favourite architectural ornaments of the ancient 
 Egyptians : the plant is not now found in Lower Egypt, nor even in Nubia, but is confined to the almost 
 unfrequented solitudes of the Upper Nile. The sculpture on the face of the column presents the pleasing, 
 and as respects Egyptian sculpture, the rare spectacle of the king and his consort in kindly attitude towards 
 each other ; and on the right of the picture is part of an interesting tablet, representing, I believe, a coronation 
 scene. Around is a perfect chaos of splendid ruin, amongst which I found it extremely difficult to fix my 
 instruments so as to command a view. May he who finds fault with the arrangement of the picture be 
 dragged to the spot, and compelled to find a better point ! 
 
JERUSALEM: 
 
 THE MOSQUE OF OMAR, FROM WITHIN THE ZION GATE. 
 
 0 write merely what I myself have observed in a locality 'which has been described by many 
 more competent and careful travellers, would be a piece of vanity which I hope satisfactorily 
 to avoid by giving my readers in this and succeeding articles an epitome of the surprisingly 
 varied and eventful history of this fallen queen of cities. Let me, however, first “explain” the 
 Photograph. The present walls of Jerusalem, which were built by the Saracens about 700 
 years ago — although excluding large spaces which were comprehended in the ancient city — 
 
 are still a “world too wide” for its shrunk dimensions: accordingly we find a considerable space of waste 
 ground within, and running almost the whole round of these walls. Here (in my picture) is a piece of it, 
 with a few bushes of prickly pear, on the left of the picture. On the other hand is a portion of the interior 
 of the city wall. The accumulation of rubbish is so great on this inner side that the outer wall is fully 
 20 feet deeper : indeed, it is pretty clear that the general level of the original Jewish city must be on an average 
 of at least 20 feet below the present surface. The space which intervenes between the foreground of this 
 picture and the mosque is the Tyropcean Yalley, over which was a bridge connecting the Mounts Moriah and 
 Zion. Some large stones, representing the spring of an arch, which are found in the outer wall of the temple 
 area, are conjectured to mark the commencement of this bridge. They were first brought into notice by 
 Dr. Robinson, and constitute one of the very few remnants of early Jewish masonry now existing in 
 Jerusalem. 
 
 The entire temple area, upon which now stand the mosques of Omar and Aksa, besides other buildings, is 
 called by the Moslems, El Haram-esh-Sherif, or the “ Holy Sanctuary.” The great mosque they call Kubbet- 
 es-Lukkrah, or “ Dome of the Rock.” It is a handsome octagonal building, standing on a platform near the 
 centre of the area, from which it is elevated by several steps. It was in a.d. 636 that the Caliph Omar, the 
 reputed founder of this mosque, took possession of the Holy City ; but it is also related that it was rebuilt by 
 the Caliph Abd-el-Melek, in the year 686. In 1099, when the Crusaders, under Godfrey of Bouillon, took 
 Jerusalem, a vast number of the Mohammedan inhabitants sought refuge within the sacred enclosure ; the 
 “ Christians,” however, broke in upon them, and committed the most terrible atrocities — neither age nor sex 
 were spared. According to Christian writers more than 10,000 (the Arab authors say 70,000) were slain 
 around this mosque, and “ the whole area was covered ankle deep with blood.” Then the “ Christians” made 
 haste to consecrate this place to its original worship ; but, in 1187, the Moslems again, under Salhdin, recovered 
 the city, and purified the sacred precincts with rose-water from Damascus, and from that day they have not 
 ceased to cherish and venerate it as the most sacred spot of earth, after the Kabeh of Mecca. And now a 
 “Christian dog” cannot approach it by the ramparts on the walls, nor look into it, without a rude growl 
 from a jealous Cerberus. 
 
 I have thus given my readers a dash of history, although not in the form which I intended : I reserve 
 the commencement of the story for another occasion. 
 

 
THE STATUES OF MEMNON, 
 
 PLAIN OF THEBES. 
 
 OT to waste time in vain regrets that I can offer nothing which is new to the learned 
 in such matters with regard to these celebrated statues, and being weary of recounting 
 “ witL what emotions of interest and wonder I beheld,” <^c., I shall be content to lay 
 before my readers whatever I can glean of interest and information from the best sources 
 already before the public, following, as usual, chiefly Sir Gardner Wilkinson. I have 
 previously described the position of these colossi— viz., in the midst of the cultivated land 
 011 the P Iain of Thebes, consequently, during the inundation of the Nile, they are surrounded on all 
 ’A sides for a considerable distance by water. But there is good reason to suppose that this was not 
 y tlle case at the P eriod of ^eir erection. In all probability they then stood on the dry rising ground, 
 
 1 the paved “dromos” to which they formed the approach being now buried to the depth of seven or 
 eight feet below the alluvial soil, where it strikes the pedestals at a height of three feet ten inches 
 above their bases. It is, therefore, clear that this part of the Nile valley has been raised by successive deposits 
 at least to the extent of eight or ten feet. Behind these two statues, in a line with the paved dromos alluded 
 to, are vestiges of several other colossal figures ; but the temple to which this avenue, 1100 feet in length, 
 once led has utterly disappeared, some of its foundations alone being traceable. In the neighbourhood are 
 some broken statues of the king, syenite sphynxes, and several lion-headed figures of black granite ; also two 
 large tablets of gritstone, with the usual circular summits in the form of Egyptian shields, upon which are 
 long sculptured inscriptions, and the figures of the king (Amunoph III.), and of his queen. Sir G. Wilkinson 
 says— “I believe that this dromos, or paved approach to the temple, was part of the Royal Street mentioned 
 in some papyri found at Thebes, which, crossing the western portion of the city from the temple, communicated 
 by means of a ferry with that of Luxor, founded by the same Amunoph, on the other side of the river • as 
 the great dromos of sphynxes connecting the temples of Luxor and Karnac formed the main street in ’ the 
 eastern district of Thebes.” 
 
 As regards the shattered condition of these statues, I have only to refer to the Photograph, which will 
 again, I fear, contradict some of the representations of previous artists. In the distance is seen the 
 range of hills which form the western boundary of the plain, studded with rows of sepulchral caves ; and 
 between the statues is the Memnonium. At a future stage of this work we purpose giving a nearer view of 
 these statues, and in connection with it something of their history, of the conjectures of the learned 
 respecting them, and translations of the inscriptions. The height of each is now 53 feet above the plain 
 1 feet more of the pedestal being buried, making a total of 60 feet. They measure 18 feet across the shoulders,’ 
 10 feet 6 inches from the top of the head to the shoulder, 16 feet 6 inches from the top of the shoulder to 
 the elbow, 17 feet 9 inches from the elbow to the finger’s end, and 19 feet 8 inches from the knee to the 
 plant of the foot. The thrones are ornamented with figures of the god Nilus, who, holding the stalks of two 
 plants familiar to the river, is engaged in binding up a pedestal or table, surmounted by the name of the 
 Egyptian monarch,— a symbolic group indicating his dominion over the upper and lower countries. 
 
THE GREAT COLUMNS AND SMALLER TEMPLE, BAALBEC. 
 
 8K R- ROBINSON prefaces his description of the Temples of Baalbec with the following passage 
 (“ Biblical Researches/’ vol. iii., p. 507), which is so remarkably appropriate to the subject 
 llpjl of my picture, that I quote it entire : — 
 
 “ The temples, the ruins of which now constitute the wonderful attractions of Baalbec, 
 are two in number the greater and the lesser. The former, with its magnificent peristyle 
 and its vast courts and portico, extended 1000 feet in length from east to west. It stands upon an 
 artificial vaulted platform, elevated from 20 to 30 feet above the adjacent country. Besides the 
 dilapidated ruins of the courts and portico, there now remain only the six south-western columns of 
 the lofty peristyle ; and these are still the crowning glory of the place. The lesser temple stands 
 likewise upon its own similar, though less elevated platform. It is ou the south of the greater temple ; is 
 parallel with it ; and its front is a few feet east of the eastern corner of the great peristyle. It had no 
 court; and its length is less than one-third part of that of the greater temple, with its courts. It was 
 finished, and that most elaborately, and the larger portion of it still remains ; while not improbably the larger 
 temple was never completed.” And in the present day, as Dr. Robinson afterwards states, “in respect to 
 the general plan, it must everywhere be borne in mind that many parts, and especially the south side, have 
 been greatly disfigured and obscured by the Saracenic erections of the middle ages, when the whole area of 
 both temples was converted into a Moslem fortress.” 
 
 The area of the great temple, to which the columns in the foreground of my picture belonged, is raised, 
 as before stated, considerably above that of the smaller structure, upon arches covering a vast extent of 
 
 vaulted chambers, which are still accessible, but contain nothing worthy of remark. The building was 290 
 
 feet long, and 1G0 wide. It had ten columns in front, and nineteen on each side, and was, from the ground 
 
 to the top of the pediment, 120 feet high. It appears that a certain Trevet, in 1550, saw twenty-seven 
 
 columns of the great temple : subsequent travellers mention but nine ; and Volney, in 1785, saw only six 
 standing — the present number. They are 71 feet 6 inches high, and the entablature — portions of which lie 
 scattered around, beautifully sculptured — was 11 feet 9 inches high. Each shaft, it will be seen, consists of 
 three pieces, joined without cement, but by means of an iron bar let vertically into each piece ; and so 
 effectual is this means, that a column of the smaller temple has fallen against the outer wall with such 
 violence as to beat in the stone against which it fell, yet the joinings of the shaft have not been in the 
 least degree opened by the shock. Some of the standing columns are considerably mutilated by violent 
 attempts to get at these bars of metal. 
 
 I have before stated that I am not versed in architectural nomenclature ; but I conclude with the 
 following edifying description of the smaller temple, from a popular article upon “Baalbec” in the Penny 
 Cyclopedia : — “ The building is peripteral, the columns are pycnostylc, and the portico is dipteral, with a 
 pseudo-nitercolumniation before the anta*. of the pronaos ! ” 
 
:w- 
 
PORTION OF THE GREAT TEMPLE. LUXOR. 
 
 (THE GOVERNMENT CORN STORES.) 
 
 ROUND many of the stupendous ruins of Old Egypt are now heaped mountains of the debris of 
 deserted towns ; or else modern Arab hovels of mud cluster round the columns, one of 
 which, with its vast circumference and overhanging capital, affords support and shelter to 
 several of these human dens. But no temple ruin— Edfou perhaps excepted — is so grievously 
 infested and polluted as the Great Temple at Luxor. He must indeed be a hardy anti- 
 quarian whose enthusiasm will lead him amongst all its columns, half of whose height is 
 buried in the garbage and filth of former generations, and the remaining half reeking and swarming with 
 that of the present. 
 
 My view, however, represents one of the most southerly courts, which is now appropriated by the 
 government as a store-ground for its tithes, — a considerable portion of the revenue of the country consisting 
 of a percentage of the crops, the price of grain being fixed by the pasha. The heaps of grain seen in this 
 
 picture, and reaching almost to the capitals of the columns, lie here throughout the year, without covering 
 
 from the weather: this demonstrates what the climate of Thebes is — a perpetual summer, almost without 
 showers. 
 
 Professor Brutsch says : — “ The ruins of Luxor are the remains of a noble group of temples erected in 
 honour of the god Amun, by the two most powerful monarchs of the eighteenth dynasty, Amenotoph III. and 
 Rameses II. (Sesostris). The walls are covered with that magnificent style of hieroglyphic inscription which 
 characterised the commencement of the eighteenth dynasty. We here see the god Amun receiving offerings, &c., 
 under every variety of his attributes. Before him stands the sacrificing monarch, to whom the god is promising 
 all splendour and blessings. £ Thy glory shall be established perpetually for millions of years, and we vouchsafe 
 to thee an endless and tranquil existence.’ So speaks more than once the celestial king to his beloved son, 
 
 because he has erected to his honour a magnificent temple of durable white sandstone.” 
 
 The first court of importance which adjoins the inmost sanctuary of the temple is one which is specially 
 attractive to all travellers, not so much on account of its ancient sculpture as for the group of frescoes which 
 
 have been laid open from the rubbish which once covered them. At some unascertained date this court was 
 
 converted into a Christian church, which rendered several alterations necessary. The ancient entrance to the 
 sanctuary (or adytum) was surrounded by a decorated shrine, and a large and small doorway was also opened, 
 
 but the whole space elsewhere was enclosed. On each side of the shrine two granite pillars were erected, and 
 
 the inner shrine, as well as the ancient hieroglyphics on the walls, were covered with painted frescoes. In the 
 shrine are the figures of what appear to be four of the apostles. The other representations are of men, partly 
 armed with Roman armour, and leading their war-horses. These paintings, which are becoming more and more 
 dilapidated, indicate a high degree of artistic skill ; but their origin is involved in uncertainty. Some artists 
 consider the lower portions of the dresses to point to the middle ages ; but it seems difficult to believe that 
 those periods could have produced such splendid frescoes among the Coptish Christians. 
 
 In connection with former views, we have described other parts of this temple, and have given other of 
 Professor Brutsch’s translations of its hieroglyphic inscriptions. 
 

ANTIQUITIES UPON THE ISLAND OF BIGGEH, 
 
 NEAR PHILJE. 
 
 f TTE interest of the Island of Biggeh to the traveller is threefold : 1st. Its peculiarly striking 
 and bold granite formation, the large detached blocks being piled upon one another in the 
 , most fantastic style, and rising in some places to pinnacles of considerable height ; 2nd. Its 
 antiquities, which consist of the ruins of a temple and sundry scattered pieces of statuary, &c. ; 
 and lastly, the splendid views which it commands of the neighbouring Island of Philas. Most 
 ~j travellers climb to the edge of the rocks overhanging the village (vide Photograph) ; and I 
 imagine that few are willing soon to relinquish the view which is obtained from thence. The 
 Island of Pliibe, with its temple ruins, and its scattered palm-trees, lies like a map below ; and all around 
 it flows the noble river, its banks beautifully diversified with rock and sandy nook, patches of bright green 
 corn-land, and groves of dark graceful palms. It will be observed that a small Arab village clusters around 
 the two antique columns in the centre of the picture. The boys and girls, too, from this village are frequently 
 seen astride pieces of palm-trees, navigating across to the other island, in search of wood, &c., for fuel. 
 As for your artist, his clearest recollections are of a luxurious and effective field-day hereaway, for he rigged 
 up his photographic tent in the small boat, and was pulled about by his shiny black Nubians from dawn 
 till dusk, just landing and knocking off a view wherever and whenever the fancy struck him. Ah, brother 
 Photographers ! with a sky like that, and such subjects, and a bottle of splendid pale — not ale — but, collo- 
 dion, you only can imagine the glory of such a day. 
 
 In the centre of my view are the ruins of a temple, which Sir G. Wilkinson says was dedicated to Athor, 
 apparently commenced by Euergetes I. (b.c. 246), and completed by Ptolemy the Elder, son of Aulctes, by 
 Augustus, and by others of the Ciesars ; but, from the presence of a red granite statue behind it, there is 
 reason to believe that an older edifice had previously existed here, of the time of a Pharaoh, either Thothmes III. 
 or Amunoph II. Amongst the mounds is a stela of red granite, bearing the name of Amasis. The arch, 
 inserted at a late period in the centre of the building, is of Christian origin ; and it is evident that the 
 early Christians occupied the temples both of this island and of Pliilm, converting them into churches, and 
 plastering over the offensive emblems of idolatrous worship with mud. 
 
 The hieroglyphic name of Biggeh appears to be “ Senmaut.” Upon many of the prominent granite rocks, 
 both in the island and on the opposite bank of the river, are found hieroglyphic inscriptions of the times of 
 the early Pharaohs ; some of them record that their writers visited these sacred places to pay their devotions 
 to the presiding deities, or that in their reigns certain immense granite blocks had been quarried and removed ; 
 and others relate to victories gained over the Ethiopians. 
 



 
 JERUSALEM, FROM THE WELL OF EN-ROGEL. 
 
 (gjSQ^I^EAVING Jerusalem by St. Stephen’s Gate, and walking down the valley of Jehoshaphat, by the 
 (fe? dry bed of the Kidron, past the tombs of Absalom, St. James, &c., and the Pool of Siloam, and 
 with the village of Siloam clinging among the rocks on the left of the valley, you meet at length 
 the deep rugged valley of Hinnom, skirting the city in a semicircular form on the southern 
 and western sides. At the junction of these two valleys stands a low vaulted stone 
 building, — this is the Well of En-rogel. The word means “ foot fountain,” because the 
 clothes were there trodden by the fullers with their feet. It probably marked the boundary line 
 (, between the tribes of Judah and Benjamin (Josh. xv. 7). By the Christians it is called the Well of 
 
 If 
 
 Nehemiah, but by the natives “ Bir Eyub,” the “ Well of Job.” The well is of an irregular quadrilateral 
 form, walled up with largo square stones, terminating above in an arch on one side, and apparently of 
 great antiquity. The building over it is furnished with one or two large rude troughs, or reservoirs of stone, 
 which are kept partly filled. The well measures 125 feet in depth, and at the time of Dr. Robinson’s visit 
 (in the middle of April), it contained about 50 feet of water. The water is sweet, but not very cold, 
 and at the present day is drawn up by hand : in the winter it is said occasionally to overflow. In going out 
 to Marsaba and the Dead Sea, travellers pass this well ; and those who have stood here will remember the 
 fine position which the venerable southern wall of the city assumes from this point of view. 
 
 Of the elevation of the city above this place, Dr. Robinson says, — “The elevation of the southern brow 
 of Zion above the Well of Nehemiah we were unable to ascertain, but from the very rapid descent of the valley 
 of Ilinnom in that part, I should be inclined to estimate it at not less than 300 feet.” The city wall is the 
 highest on this side, and appears to have been built, not on the brow of a valley, but on the slope of a declivity, 
 and is perhaps, on an average, 60 feet in height. At the south-east corner are several courses of stones, 
 alternating with each other, in which each stone measures from 17 to 19 feet in length, by 3 or 4 feet in 
 height. With reference to these stones Dr. Robinson says, — “ At the first view of these walls, I was lpd to 
 the persuasion that the lower portions had belonged to the ancient temple. The size of the stones, and the 
 heterogeneous character of the walls, render it a matter beyond all doubt that the former were never laid in 
 their present places by the Mohammedans ; and the peculiar form in which they are hewn does not properly 
 belong, so far as I know, either to Saracenic or Roman architecture ; indeed, everything seems to point to a 
 Jewish origin.” The writer, after a second visit to Jerusalem, and a careful examination of this work, fully 
 agrees with Dr. Robinson in this conclusion. 
 
 The country around Jerusalem is all of limestone formation, and not by any means fertile, the rocks 
 everywhere projecting in patches above the soil. Yet the olive flourishes abundantly, and a good deal of corn 
 is grown in the more sheltered places. Pomegranates, figs, artichokes, and other vegetables, are cultivated in the 
 rich plot of land at the junction of the valleys of Hinnom and Jehoshaphat, 
 
 

 

 
 INTERIOR COURT OF TIIE TEMPLE OF MEDINET-HABOO, 
 
 ; HE remains of Medinet-Haboo, on the western bank of the Nile, consist chiefly of a series 
 # °f P3'l° n gateways and of richly-sculptured and painted courts. The one here represented 
 
 is, I believe, the third great court. Of it Sir G. Wilkinson says, “ The next area is far more 
 splendid, and may be looked upon as one of the finest which adorn the various temples of 
 Egypt. Its dimensions are about 123 feet by 133, and its height, from the pavement to the 
 cornice, 39 feet 4 inches.. It is surrounded by an interior peristyle, whose east and west sides are 
 supported by five massive columns, the south by a row of eight Osiridm pillars, and the north by a similar 
 number, behind which is an elegant corridor of circular columns, whose effect is unequalled by any other in 
 Thebes. Nor do the colours, many of which are still preserved, tend a little to add to the beauty of its 
 columns, of whose massive style some idea may be formed from their circumference of nearly 23 feet to a 
 height of 24, or about three diameters.” 
 
 “ In contemplating the grandeur of this court, we cannot but be struck with the paltry appearance of the 
 Christian colonnade that encumbers the centre ; or fail to regret the demolition of the interior of the temple 
 (whose architraves were levelled to form the columns that now spoil the architectural effect of the area), and 
 the total destruction of the Osiridse figures once attached to its pillars. But if the rigid piety or the domestic 
 convenience of the early Christians destroyed much of the ornamental details of this grand building, we are 
 partly repaid by the interesting sculptures they unintentionally preserved beneath the clay, or stucco, with 
 which they concealed them.” 
 
 “ The architraves present the dedication of the ‘ Palace of Ramescs, at Thebes,’ which is said to have 
 been built of good hard blocks of sandstone, and the adytum to have been beautified with precious stones 
 and silver.” 
 
 Sir G. Wilkinson then proceeds to give descriptions of some of the scenes sculptured on the walls, from 
 which we extract the following : — “ On the east, or rather north-east wall, Rameses is borne in his shrine, 
 or canopy, seated on a throne ornamented with the figures of a lion and a sphynx, which is preceded by a 
 hawk. Behind him stand two figures of Truth and Justice with outspread wings. Twelve Egyptian princes, 
 sons of the king, bear the shrine.” Then follows a long procession of officers and priests, &c., a guard of 
 soldiers bringing up the rear. There is, in truth, in this court a bewildering variety of sculpture : elaborate 
 representations of offerings to the gods, the altars loaded with flowers, &c. ; a picture referring to the 
 coronation of the king, who, in the hieroglyphics, is said to have “ put on the crown of the upper and 
 lower countries,” which the carrier-pigeons, flying to the four sides of the world, are to announce to the gods of 
 the south, north, east, and west ; and numerous battle-scenes and triumphal processions. In one of the former 
 Rameses is represented standing in his car, which his horses at full speed carry into the midst of the 
 enemy’s ranks, and from which he discharges his arrows on their flying infantry. Then he is seen seated 
 at the back of his car, and the spirited horses are held by his attendants on foot. Besides other trophies, 
 large heaps of hands are placed before him, which an officer counts one by one, whilst another notes down 
 their number on a scroll, each heap containing 3000, and the total indicating the returns of the enemy’s 
 slain. 
 
 But, in truth, a year of time and a volume would not suffice to decipher and describe the sculptures 
 which adorn this magnificent temple. 
 
 ':■! * 
 
 m , . i-'i -- a -J CaOji £ • f .- . 
 
THE MEMNONIUM. THEBES. 
 
 YVING, in previous articles (especially in the one describing the great fallen colossus at the 
 Memnonium), treated this subject popularly, let us now hear what Professor Brutsch has to 
 say of its history and sculptures : — 
 
 “ Hieroglyphic inscriptions designate the Memnonium as ‘the House of Rameses II., in 
 the City of Amun.’ On the right hand propylon is the painting of a battle, with the 
 inscription — ‘ This is the report of what His Sacred Majesty has accomplished. He 
 encamps in the north-west of the land Ketesch, and seizes his enemies and the vanquished in the 
 land Cheta. He stands alone there in his greatness. No one else can be compared to him, &c.’ 
 
 This war against the Cheta (in Mesopotamia) forms a most important epoch in the life of 
 Rameses II. 
 
 “ Beyond the propvlse we enter the great court, formerly terminated on the north and south by a splendid 
 granite colonnade. Into this court there were two entrances, near one of which are extended the remains of 
 the celebrated syenite colossal statue of Rameses II., of which a view has already appeared in this work. 
 
 “ Following the entrance to the peristyle, we see two rows of columns, in the form of Osiris, enclosing 
 
 a central court. On the architrave over the westernmost of these columns is a short inscription, but in ver} r 
 large characters — ‘ The great Lord of Valour, who has subjugated the Nubians : their men and lands are in 
 fragments : he is alone in his grandeur : there is no one comparable to him, the immortal King Ra-to-serma- 
 sotpen-Ra.’ Upon another of the architraves is the following dedicatory inscription: — ‘To the living 
 Horns, the mighty Bull, the Friend of Truth, the Lord of the Diadem, who has adorned Egypt and chastised 
 the nations, the golden Ibis, the Protector of the Year, the greatly Victorious, the King and Lord of both 
 Worlds, the Sun, Lord of Truth, Chosen of the Sun, the Son of the Sun, the Lord of the Diadem, Amun- 
 meri-Rameses, has erected this at his Memnonium to his father, Amun-Ra ; he has erected to him a large 
 and splendid colonnaded hall of good white sandstone, having a frontage supported by grand pillars with 
 lotus-capped capitals, and surrounded by columns with truncated capitals of lotus-buds, for a Temple Hall of 
 the Lord of Gods, on the occasion of his Festival of the Valley. He has erected this to him, the Dispenser 
 of Life.’ Amongst the inscriptions in the same hall is a double enumeration of the members of the royal 
 family of Rameses. Twenty-three princes and two princesses are mentioned by name. 
 
 “ The next adjoining hall in the Memnonium might be styled ‘ the Astronomical Court,’ on account of its 
 celebrated representation of the constellations. We also come upon the sacred library, with its presiding 
 deities Thot and Safcli, the god and goddess of libraries. Above it is inscribed, ‘ Hospital for the Soul.’ On 
 the leaves of the sacred tree ‘ascht’ we read the words, ‘Thus saith Safch, the mistress of Manuscripts and 
 the custodian of the Library — I multiply thy years on earth to the amount of ten millions.’ The astronomical 
 
 paiutings have been divided into three compartments : the first contains the twelve months of the year, with 
 
 their planets and chief constellations ; the second has a list of deities, some of whom are mentioned in other 
 inscriptions as being the special gods of particular days of the month, and amongst them we often find King 
 Rameses himself, — these deities are represented as surrounded by the stars revolving round the Pole ; the 
 third compartment contains the twelve gods of the months, — a long inscription on the outer border commences, 
 
 ‘ Thus say the gods and goddesses of the southern heavens to the King Rameses, — The sun shall serve thee 
 with his seasons, and the moon shall aid thee with her monthly increase ; thou shalt shine as Sirius in the 
 heavens ; the overflowings of the Nile shall never fail thee, and the stars shall brighten thy existence,’ &c. 
 
 “The last of the still remaining halls of the Memnonium is interesting for its large and double list of 
 offerings which the King, Rameses II., is represented as bearing with incense to the god Ptah, of Memphis, 
 under all his appellations. To the left of the adytum are still remaining some vaulted erections of brick- 
 work : these are at once shown to belong to the age of Rameses by the usual stamp of his reign impressed 
 upon the bricks of which they are formed.’’ 
 
 
 
 


JERUSALEM FROM THE CITY WALL. 
 
 here, too, is another piece of the ruinous unoccupied space which I have before stated runs 
 nearly the whole round of the interior of the shrunken city. In the mid-distance are seen 
 
 the Mosque of Omar, the minaret from which the call to prayers is proclaimed, which stands upon the wall 
 of the so-called Pool of Bethesda, and a portion of the lower city. 
 
 In the present and succeeding articles I purpose giving a sketch of the history of Jerusalem from the 
 earliest times. 
 
 Jerusalem is mentioned very early in Scripture, being usually supposed to be the Salem of which 
 Melchizcdelc was king ; and the literal meaning of the word Jerusalem is “ Habitation of Peace.” Josephus, 
 and all the “ fathers of the church,” Jerome excepted, unite in understanding Jerusalem and Salem to 
 indicate the same place. It will be remembered that Melchizedek was King of Salem. The name Jerusalem 
 first occurs in Josh. x. 1, where Adoni-zedec, King of Jerusalem, is mentioned as having entered into an 
 alliance with other kings against Joshua. The boundary lino of the possessions of the tribe of Judah was drawn 
 through the valley of Ben Ilinnom, the country on the south of it, as Bethlehem, belonged to Judah, but 
 Jerusalem itself, then occupied by the Jebusites, appertained to Benjamin : its name was then Jehus. 
 
 After the death of Joshua, Judah being directed to fight against the Canaanites, they took Jerusalem 
 and set it on fire; after which the Judaliites, Benjamites, and Jebusites, jointly occupied the city, for it is 
 recorded (Josh. xv. 63) that Judah could not drive out the Jebusites. They probably kept possession of the 
 lower city, which David conquered at a later period. The next mention of the city is when it is stated 
 (I Sam. xvii. 54) that David took the head of Goliath, and brought it to Jerusalem ; and when he had conquered 
 the citadel of Zion, he fixed his abode there, and called it the city of David. The situation of Jerusalem 
 as the capital of the twelve tribes, and the seat of the theocratical monarchy, would appear to human 
 wisdom to be an inconvenient one ; and as the law required all the adult males to repair to Jerusalem three 
 times a year to worship, its remote situation, in respect of the more distant tribes, was afterwards found to 
 be a serious hardship — so much so, that it seems to have been one of the excuses for the revolt of the ten 
 
 tribes. But looking at it as the ultimately-designed capital of the separate kingdom of Judah, its situation is 
 
 unexceptionable. 
 
 We need not further advert to the history of Jerusalem under the long and prosperous reign of its first 
 
 great Jewish king : doubtless he did much to strengthen and adorn the city. 
 
 The first temple was built by Solomon upon Mount Moriah : it was called “ The House of Jehovah,” 
 and was the visible seat of the theocratical government, — the human kings being taught to regard themselves 
 as merely vicegerents. Jerusalem, although politically unimportant, thus became the very place of which 
 Moses spoke (Deut. xii. 5) — “The place which the Lord your God shall choose out of all your tribes to 
 put his name there, even unto his habitation shall ye seek, and thither shall ye come.” 
 


 
 THE NORTHERN SHORE OF THE DEAD SEA. 
 
 ERIIAPS there is not a spot upon earth which is popularly invested with more ill-defined 
 and mysterious interest than the Dead Sea : and although a practical acquaintance 
 with its peculiarities may dispel some of the unsubstantial images which are supposed to 
 haunt its shores, or float over its surface, there will yet remain enough of strangeness, and 
 loneliness, and unaccountability, to entitle it to , class as one of the most remarkable natural objects 
 the face of the globe. 
 
 I believe that many persons are under the impression that this -sea did not exist previous to the 
 i overthrow of the “ cities of the plain.” This, however, is not the case ; for although it is not mentioned 
 ' ) at all in the New Testament, we find it alluded to as early as Gen. xiv. 3, where it is called “ The 
 Salt Sea;” and again, Deut. iv. 49, “The Sea of the Plain,” or the Arabah ; and in Joel ii. 20, “The Eastern 
 Sea.” It is now called by the Arabs “ The Bahr-el-Lut,” or the Sea of Lot. It is probable that at 
 the time of the destruction of Sodom, this sea overflowed its southern boundaries, overwhelming a beautiful 
 and well-watered plain, upon which stood the five doomed cities. In the year 1848, Lieutenant Lynch, an 
 officer in the United States service, sailed over this sea in all directions, and made many interesting observations. 
 He found the greatest depth to be 1308 feet, and its depression below the level of the Mediterranean 1316 feet , — 
 I believe, without doubt, the lowest part of the surface of our globe. Many conjectures have been hazarded 
 to account for this extraordinary depression ; the fact, however, accounts for several of the phenomena 
 which distinguish the Dead Sea, such as the great heat and consequent evaporation from its surface, 
 sufficient, it would appear, to carry off the large flood of water which the River Jordan, and other streams 
 in the south, constantly pour into it ; — for the sea has now no outlet. When I was there, in the month of May, 
 the thermometer rose to 130'' Fahr. in the sun. 
 
 There are no indications of volcanic agency in the northern districts of the Dead Sea, but towards the 
 south such indications are observable in the displacement of strata, as well as in the presence of sundry 
 volcanic agents. I possess large specimens of native sulphur from its shores ; but the most remarkable 
 feature is the existence of an immense mass of fossil or rock salt, which is now considered to be a frequent 
 accompaniment of volcanic action. In the present instance a mountain of this substance, 100 to 150 feet high, 
 and 5 or 6 miles long, extends along the south-west shore of the lake, and is called by the Arabs “ Usdam.” 
 The Dead Sea is, on an average, 38 miles long, and 9 broad. Dr. Robinson gives the following analysis of 
 the water, taken from a depth of 185 fathoms, or 1110 feet. The analysis is by Professor Booth, of Philadelphia, 
 
 1-22742 
 
 Specific gravity at 60° 
 
 Chloride of Magnesium 
 Chloride of Calcium 
 Chloride of Sodium 
 Chloride of Potassium 
 Bromide of Potassium 
 Sulphate of Lime 
 
 115-8071 
 
 31-0746 
 
 78-5537 
 
 6-5860 
 
 1-3741 
 
 0-7012 
 
 264-1867 
 
 735-8133 
 
 
 I 
 
 
 So that the various salts constitute rather more than one-fourth of the entire specific gravity of the water. 
 Its buoyancy is proverbial. It is probable that, from its extreme saltness, neither auimal nor vegetable life 
 can exist in it ; but it is beautifully bright, and has no offensive smell. I saw gazelles almost upon its shores, 
 and the footprints of a very large hyena close to the water’s edge. 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 $pea*L- 
 
 obtm- 
 
 NA 
 
 63 *' 
 
 m 
 
 I foil GETi'i C;«ItK 
 y.J LiftX*RV 
 
 
 m