316 SYMBOLICAL SCULPTURES. blocks of stone which form the roof of the pronaos are carved the names of numerous travellers, both from the old and new world-but chiefly English. The upper chambers have suffered much more than those below from the wanton depredations of antiquarians, who, in their pretended zeal for the arts, mutilate and destroy, wherever they are permitted, the noblest monuments of antiquity. It was from one of these small chambers that Saulnier and Lelorrain, with a barbarism which would have disgraced a Huron, cut away the circular zodiac. But innumerable sculptured groups remain, many of which are capable of interpretation; and among these there is one on the ceiling which particularly interested me. A bearded figure, with his feet turned up to his head, so as with his body to form a complete circle, is represented surrounded with diverging beams, like the rising sun. Directly opposite is the figure of a woman, with legs and arms outstretched, so as to describe a lunar crescent, and having her face turned towards the man, who seems to light up and kindle her whole figure with his rays. This is obviously a representation of the influence of the sun upon the moon. On the sides and bosom of the female are numerous diminutive figures of mortals, adoring the full moon, on whose disk is a woman walking on her hands and feet, in order to resemble a cow, the symbol of Athor. On her arms is depicted a globe with human legs, alluding, perhaps, to that article of their philosophical creed which taught that the world EXTERIOR OF THE TEMPLE. 317 was a vast animal, the same on a grand, as man is on a small, scale.* CCXXVII. Passing from this apartment into another, we find a minute representation of the loves of Isis and Osiris, with most of the subsequent events of their fable, including his burial; but these, with many other sculptured scenes in this temple, decency forbids us to describe. From the examination of the interior, which, were all the fables alluded to understood, might occupy and amuse the mythological student for six months, we proceeded to observe the exterior walls, beginning with those on the east, which have recently been partly pulled down by the governor of the district. The figures, unless where purposely destroyed, are here in better preservation than in the interior, where the smoke of lamps, the dung of bats and birds, and the natural effect of a close nitrous atmosphere, have combined to obliterate the finer touches of the chisel. The groups which adorn the eastern wall of the temple, remarkable in many respects, are rendered doubly so by their probable connection with a human sacrifice, which is going on before Osiris near the southern extremity of the building. Antiquarians who seek for perfection in the character and institutions of the nations whose remains they study, and, like hired advocates, Diodorus Siculus, i. 11. The μarpókocμog and μкpóкorμos of the Greeks. The Hindoos still entertain the same idea of the universe. Creuzer, Rel. de l'Ant. i. 273. 649. And Kepler, in his old age, imagined that our globe was a living being. 318 ASPECT OF THE TEMPLE. extenuate all their vices and excesses, pretend that the ancient Egyptians never sacrificed men. But history distinctly states the fact; and, were history silent, their own monuments speak but too plainly. The kings of Egypt, says Diodorus, immolated redhaired men, for their resemblance to Typhon, at the tomb of Osiris *; and we almost everywhere observe upon the walls of their sacred edifices a commemoration of this barbarous practice, which subsisted until the reign of Amasis, who prohibited it at Heliopolis; though it is probable that in the other cities and towns it continued until finally abolished by the victorious Persians. The circumstances of these sacrifices I shall elsewhere describe. Nowhere could they be more out of harmony with the genius loci than on Venus's temple, where every thing should rather conspire to lead the imagination to rites the very reverse of destructive. The front of the temple, from several bearings taken, during my third visit, by Lieutenant Welsted, of the Indian Navy, was found to face the N. and by E., allowing for the variation of the needle. CCXXVIII. At the south-west corner of the larger structure, there is a small chapel dedicated to Isis, no less profusely ornamented than the other. It contains a niche which, from the fragments that remain, seems to have been occupied by a figure of Typhon, placed upon the head of that of a woman, * L. i. c. 88.-Plutarch, de Iside et Osiride, p. 380. THE TYPHONIUM. 319 draped, and now headless. If so, it could have been introduced only to receive the scoffs and insults of the votaries of Osiris. Close to the dromos, or area, of the temple of Venus, is another sacred building, which has been denominated a Typhonium, because upon the plinths surmounting the capitals of the columns there is an ugly figure, which is supposed to represent Typhon. It is greatly encumbered on the outside with rubbish, but is free within. The pronaos has been destroyed, and the roof of the first chamber of the sekos has fallen in. At the extremity of the adytum there is a kind of sculptured altar-piece between two pilasters, where the deity of the shrine was probably once depicted; but the figure has been too much defaced to allow of our conjecturing what god or goddess it represented. Having spent the whole of the day among the ruins, I returned, about sunset, to my boat; Monro, impatient to be at Thebes, having quitted the temple early in the afternoon, and preceded me up the river. Sunday, Jan. 6. Déndera. CCXXIX. There being at Gheneh an Arab bearing the title of English vice-consul, I this morning paid him a visit, and was very politely received. He had several sons, all grown up to manhood, one of whom I found with a Syrian merchant seated on a chair, in a kind of vestibule, where they usually receive strangers. Pipes and coffee were immediately brought in; and, while we were smoking, an animated and not uninteresting conversation was carried on 320 SHELLS OF THE RED SEA. between us, through Suleiman, who was a very good interpreter. Owing to this town's being the emporium for all goods coming into Egypt by the way of Kosseir, persons are here much better acquainted with the countries and productions of the farther East, than they generally are in other Egyptian towns. At this time, however, there were no Indian goods in the bazar; or, at least, none of any particular value. Here travellers who do not design visiting Kosseir usually inquire for those beautiful shells which are found along the shores of the Red Sea, near the Heroöpolitan Promontory, and the Port and Island of Venus; and our worthy vice-consul happening to possess nearly a thousand of these shells, among which were many of the rarest specimens known, requested me to accept of them, but, of course, consented to receive a present in return. CCXXX. Soon after my entrance, we were joined by a Maltese physician in the service of the Pasha, whose business it was to examine the men seized in the surrounding villages for the army. He had been four months in Upper Egypt, and observed that, out of twelve hundred conscripts who ought to have been impressed and sent down to Cairo by the Mamoors, only eight hundred had hitherto been furnished. The men, he said, constantly made their escape into the mountains or the desert, where they must subsist by robbery; or blinded or maimed themselves at home. Their aversion to the army accounted for from the lowness of their pay (not ex he |