long series of royal names, as was evident from the ring, border, or, as the French call it, the cartouche, which surrounds such inscriptions. On examination, it proved to be a genealogical table of the immediate predecessors of Ramesses the Great, the Sethos or Sethosis of Manetho, the Sesoosis of Diodorus, and the Sesostris of Herodotus. A careful comparison of it with other documents has enabled M. Champollion to ascertain, with a considerable degree of probability, the period in which the sixteenth and following dynasties mentioned by Manetho must have occupied the throne. The epochs thus determined, though still liable to some objections, are supported by so many concurrent and independent testimonies as to warrant the expectation, now entertained by many chronologists, that they will ultimately be established beyond the reach of controversy.*

Dendera, which is commonly identified with the ancient Tentyra, presents some very striking examples of that sumptuous architecture which the people of Egypt lavished upon their places of worship. The gateway in particular which leads to the temple of Isis has excited universal admiration. Each front, as well as the interior, are covered with sculptured hieroglyphics, which are executed with a richness, a precision, elegance of form, and variety of ornament, surpassing in many respects the similar edifices which are found at Thebes and Philoe. The height is forty-two feet, the width thirty-three, and the depth seventeen. Advancing along the brick ruins," says Dr Richardson, we came to an

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• Encyclopædia Metropolitana, article Egypt.

long series of royal names, as was evident from the ring, border, or, as the French call it, the cartouche, which surrounds such inscriptions. On examination, it proved to be a genealogical table of the immediate predecessors of Ramesses the Great, the Sethos or Sethosis of Manetho, the Sesoosis of Diodorus, and the Sesostris of Herodotus. A careful comparison of it with other documents has enabled M. Champollion to ascertain, with a considerable degree of probability, the period in which the sixteenth and following dynasties mentioned by Manetho must have occupied the throne. The epochs thus determined, though still liable to some objections, are supported by so many concurrent and independent testimonies as to warrant the expectation, now entertained by many chronologists, that they will ultimately be established beyond the reach of controversy.*

Dendera, which is commonly identified with the ancient Tentyra, presents some very striking examples of that sumptuous architecture which the people of Egypt lavished upon their places of worship. The gateway in particular which leads to the temple of Isis has excited universal admiration. Each front, as well as the interior, are covered with sculptured hieroglyphics, which are executed with a richness, a precision, elegance of form, and variety of ornament, surpassing in many respects the similar edifices which are found at Thebes and Philoe. The height is forty-two feet, the width thirty-three, and the depth seventeen. "Advancing along the brick ruins," says Dr Richardson, "we came to an

.

Encyclopædia Metropolitana, article Egypt.

elegant gateway or propylon, which is also of sandstone, neatly hewn, and completely covered with sculpture and hieroglyphics remarkably well cut. Immediately over the centre of the doorway is the beautiful Egyptian ornament usually called the globe, with serpent and wings, emblematical of the glorious sun poised in the airy firmament of heaven, supported and directed in his course by the eternal wisdom of the Deity. The sublime phraseology of Scripture, the Sun of Righteousness shall rise with healing in his wings,'-could not be more emphatically or more accurately represented to the human eye than by this elegant device." The temple itself still retains all its original magnificence. The centuries which have elapsed since the era of its foundation have scarcely affected it in any important part, and have impressed upon it no greater appearance of age than serves to render it more venerable and imposing. To Mr Hamilton, who had seen innumerable monuments of the same kind throughout the Thebaid, it seemed as if he were now witnessing the highest degree of architectural excellence that had ever been attained on the borders of the Nile. Here were concentrated the united labours of ages, and the last effort of human art and industry in that uniform line of construction which had been adopted in the earliest times.

The portico consists of twenty-four columns, in three rows; each above twenty-two feet in circumference, thirty-two feet high, and covered with hieroglyphics. On the front, Isis is in general the principal figure to whom offerings are made. On the architrave are represented two processions of men and women bringing to their goddess, and to Osiris,

who is sitting behind her, globes encompassed with cows' horns, mitred snakes, lotus flowers, vases, little boats, graduated staffs, and other instruments of their emblematical worship. The interior of the pronaos is adorned with sculptures, most of them preserving part of the paint with which they have been covered. Those on the ceiling are peculiarly rich and varied, all illustrative of the union between the astronomical and religious creeds of the ancient Egyptians; yet, though each separate figure is well preserved and perfectly intelligible, we must be more intimately acquainted with the real principles of the sciences, as they were then taught, before we can undertake to explain the signs in which they were embodied.

The sekos, or interior of the temple, consists of several apartments, all the walls and ceilings of which are in the same way covered with religious and astronomical representations. The roofs, as is usual in Egypt, are flat, formed of oblong masses of stone resting on the side-walls; and when the distance between these is too great, one or two rows of columns are carried down the middle of the apartment, on which the huge flags are supported. The capitals of these columns are very richly ornamented with the budding lotus, the stalks of which, being extended a certain way down the shaft, give it the appearance of being fluted, or rather scallopped. The rooms have been lighted by small perpendicular holes cut in the ceiling, and, where it was possible to introduce them, by oblique ones in the sides. But some idea might be formed of the perpetual gloom in which the apartments on the ground-floor of the sekos must have been buried, from the fact