Page:The Overland Monthly, volume 1, issue 1.djvu/80



TO the student of archeology Egypt is perhaps the most interesting country in the world. Its recorded history dates back almost to the genesis of therace. Its hieroglyphics rehearse the annals of a mighty empire that flourished two thousand years before the Star of Bethlehem had arisen. When Syria was a waste, and Greece slept the sleep of barbarism, the Nile reflected the splendors of a civilization hardly inferior to our own. Long before Plato dreamed, or Homer sang, the Priests of Isis unveiled the mysteries of science, and told the story of the immortality of the soul. Before the Parthenon was conceived, before the temple of Solomon was reared, the sculptors and painters of Thebes and Beni Hassan had taught the rudiments of plastic art.

No other country has such a wealth

of ruins. The traveler is overwhelmed by their number and magnitude. The Pyramids of Gezeh are only types of a vast system of colossal remains stretching from Alexandria to Wady Halfa. The banks of the river are literally strewn for hundreds of miles with the debris of the civilization of the Pharaohs. The sides of the mountains are honeycombed with tombs; forests of obelisks glitter in the mellow sunlight; calm-eyed sphynxes greet the wanderer from a hundred storied sites; broken arches and crumbling columns crown innumerable eminences on the river's shores. Ruins everywhere: at every curve and bend of the Nile; on every plain and rocky height; on the Delta and the desert; from the shores of the sounding sea to the cataracts. The spirit of the dead past haunts the mysterious river. It carries us back to the infancy of man. We are brought face to face with the people who built the Pyramids—who

founded Thebes and Memphis. We walk the sacred corridors of the temples of the Pharaohs; we visit the burial places of extinct races; we behold the products of their genius, the very implements with which they wrought.

Philz is beautiful; Memphis is sadly picturesque; Dendra is a memory to cling to the soul forever; the grottoes of Beni Hassan well repay the toils of travel; the Pyramids are at once sublime and awe-inspiring; but the crowning glory of Egypt is Thebes. Shall I ever forget the eight days spent among its ruins? The approach to it coming up the Nile is one of the most striking in the East. The valley widens, the desert recedes, the mountains form themselves into a mighty amphitheatre opening toward the north. As we near the site of the "hundred-gated" city, the majestic propylon of the Temple of Karnak is darkly outlined against the sky. Nearer still, and groups of sphynxes appear through a grove of palms. A slight bend of the river, and Luxor with its obelisks, and columns, and statues of gods, and ruined temples, bursts upon the view. To the right are seen the Vocal Memnon, the palace and temples of the Pharaohs; while on every side, for miles and miles, stretches the broad plain that enshrines the dust of Thebes. We leave our Nile boat, and under the escort of an army of donkey-boys, pay a hurried visit to the Temple of Luxor. Time has cruelly played the vandal with it. Of all the grandeur of the once glorious edifice only a few pillars and scarred walls remain. Near by stands a solitary obelisk, its brother having been sacrilegiously carried off to adorn a European capital. At the entrance of the temple are a couple of colossal statues of Kamases the Second—broad-breasted fellows, meas