90 ARAB CEMETERY. in the nose, and cowrie shells are here the ordinary adornments. The children wore bracelets and anklets of cowrie shells, and strings of coins. At Elephantina, another refuge of the early Christians, we found some curious bronze idols and coins. A large idol of their favourite god Osiris was standing in a wasted plain, and there were other sculptural remains exhumed from the ragged soil. We ascended a high cliff to obtain a view of the cataract; but were so assailed by naked children to purchase spurious coins, and fragments of idols, that we were glad to beat a hasty retreat to the boat. These people appeared more degraded and wretched than in any other settlement we had visited. There was indication. of savageness, too, in their manners, which did not invite travellers to linger longer among them than was absolutely necessary. Our ideas of death could scarcely be associated with a more desolate spot than an Arab cemetery. Long sandy plains stretch out before the eye, relieved by neither shrub GRANITE QUARRIES. 91 nor blade of grass. Some of the wealthier classes of Mussulmans have a sculptured grave-stone surmounted by a carved turban. But these are the exceptions; the common graves are heaps of gravel covered with broken pottery. Occasionally the white-washed tomb of a sheikh lifts its dome above the humbler mounds; but not a flower breathes its fragrance over the last resting-place of the Egyptian, nor does a blade of green grass wave in typical significance. Sometimes a lonely cypress tree is planted over a sheikh's tomb, but even this is rare. GRANITE QUARRIES AT ASSOUAN. These quarries are full of curious interest, and suggest many a speculation. One obelisk in the rough lay prostrate and half finished, and the peculiar marks of the wedges employed by the old Egyptians to sever the masses of stone are still visible. Blocks of granite lay promiscuously about as if ready for 92 GRANITE QUARRIES. transport, and the road through them is clearly defined. On the 8th of December we left Assouan for our downward passage. CHAPTER X. Temples and Tombs.-Egyptian Antiquaries.—The God of the Egyptian and the God of the Greek. The Pagan and Sacred Historian. TEMPLES AND TOMBS ON THE NILE. THE history of ancient Egypt is only to be read in the remains of her temples and tombs, which lie all along the valley of her river. There a voice which has been silent for a thousand years speaks again from the hieroglyphic sculptures of the past-those illustrations, cut in imperishable stone, which baffled the scholarship of the world till the year 1800; then Europe awoke to the subject through the genius of Champollion. Tradition is no longer the chief authority for the unravelment of that once tangled skein. Those mystic handwritings, which baffled all human investiga 94 TEMPLES AND TOMBS. tion for so long a period, by the aid of science, are now brought out of darkness into marvellous light.' The discovery of the famous 'Rosetta stone' by the French engineer Monsieur Bouchard, in 1799, was the era of dawn and daylight to what had hitherto been obscure and oblivious. Then succeeded the researches of Champollion and other eminent archæologists. We learn from Mr. Gliddon, in his admirable work on Ancient Egypt,' that 'prior to the year 1800 the published notices of the few travellers who had ventured to approach the ancient ruins of Egypt, were so confused in description, so ambiguous in detail, so erroneous in attempts at explaining their origin and design, that the fact that these monuments merited more than ordinary investigation, was the only point on which European savants were able to decide.' We also learn from the same invaluable source that in 1808, the learned work of Quatremère, 'Recherchés,' demonstrated that the Coptic tongue was identical with the Egyptian language handed down from |