Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/113

Rh imagined it was an old obelisk, hewn to that round form. It is nine feet diameter; and were it but 80 feet high, it would require a prodigious obelisk indeed, that could admit to be hewn to this circumference for such a length, so as perfectly to efface the hieroglyphics that must have been very deeply cut in the four faces of it.

tomb of Alexander has been talked of as one of the antiquities of this city. Marmol says he saw it in the year 1546. It was, according to him, a small house, in form of a chapel, in the middle of the city, near the church of St Mark, and was called Escander.

thing itself is not probable, for all those that made themselves masters of Alexandria, in the earliest times, had too much respect for Alexander, to have reduced his tomb to so obscure a state. It would have been spared even by the Saracens; for Mahomet speaks of Alexander with great respect, both as a king and a prophet. The body was preserved in a glass coffin, in Strabo's time, having been robbed of the golden one in which it was first deposited.

Greeks, for the most part, are better instructed in the history of these places than the Cophts, Turks, or Christians; and, after the Greeks, the Jews.

I was perfectly disguised, having for many years worn the dress of the Arabs, I was under no constraint, but walked through the town in all directions, accompanied by any of