Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/329

 UPPER AND LOVER EGfPT. 313 found along the Nile in Nubia are analogous, both in style and in grandeur, to those in Thebais. 1 What is remarkable is, that both the one and the other are strikingly distinguished from the Pyramids, which alone remain to illustrate the site of the an- cient Memphis. There are no pyramids either in upper Egypt or in Nubia ; but on the Nile, above Nubia, near the Ethiopian Meroe, pyramids in great number, though of inferior dimensions, are again found. From whence, or in what manner, Egyptian institutions first took their rise, we have no means of determin- in<r: but there seems little to bear out the supposition of Ileeren, 2 1 Respecting the monuments of ancient Egyptian art, see the summary of O. Mailer, Archiiologie der Kunst, sects. 215-233, and a still better account and appreciation of them in Carl Schnaase, Geschichte der Bildcndcn Kdnsto bey den Alten, Diisseldorf, 1843, vol. i, book ii, clis. 1 and 2. In regard to the credibility and value of Egyptian history anterior to Psammetichus, there are many excellent remarks by Mr. Kenrick, in the preface to his work, " The Egypt of Herodotus," (the second book of He rodotus, with notes.) About the recent discoveries derived from the hiero glvphics, he says : t; We know that it was the custom of the Egyptian kings to inscribe the temples and obelisks which they raised with their own names or with distinguishing hieroglyphics ; but in no one instance do these names, as read by the modern decipherers of hieroglyphics on monuments said to have been raised by kings before Fsammctichus, correspond with the names given by Herodotus." (Preface, p. xliv.) He farther adds in a note, "A name which has been read phonetically A/fn, has been found at Thebes, and Mr. Wilkinson supposes it to be Menes. It is remarkable, however, that the names which follow are not phonetically written, so that it is probable that .'his is not to be read Mcna. Besides, the cartouche, which immediately follows, is that of a king of the eighteenth dynasty ; so that, at all events, it cannot have been engraved till many centuries after the supposed age of Mencs ; and the occurrence of the name no more decides the question of historical existence than that of Cecrops in the Parian Chronicle." 2 Heeren, Idcen iiber den Vcrkehr der Alten Welt, part ii, 1, p. 403. The opinion given by Parthey, however (De Philis InsuU, p. 100, Berlin, 1830), may perhaps be just: " Antiquissima setate eundem populum, dicamus JEgyptiacum, >iii ripas inde a MeroO insula usque ad JEgyptum inferiorem oceupiisse, c monumentorum congruentia. apparct: posteriore tempore, tab- nlis et annalibus nostris longe superiore, alia stirps -ZEthiopica interiora terra usque ad cataractam Syenensem obtinuit. Ex quS aatatc certa rerum notitia id DOS pervenit, .ZEgyptiorum et JEthiopum segregatio jam facta est. Hero- dotus :a;tcriquc scriptorcs Grreci populos acute disccrnunt." At this moment, SvOnu and its cataract mark the boundary of two peopl VOL. in. 14