ANALYSIS OF M. JOMARD'S EDITION OF M. CAILLIAUD'S FIRST WORK ON EGYPT. THE name of M. Frederic Cailliaud of Nantes is well known to all those who are engaged in the study of the antiquities of Egypt, and the geography of Africa in general. He returned to Paris in the month of February 1819, and the report of his curious discoveries in the desarts east and west of the Thebaïd had preceded him, and the series of new observations that he made known excited amongst the learned men of that capital an interest as lively as it was general. Encouraged by their suffrages and the protection of the government, M. Cailliaud determined to resume his travels in the East; he prepared himself to make them with more effect, and, providing himself with resources that he wanted in his first expedition, he set out in the month of September 1819. Always fortunate, at least up to that time, he arrived in the month of June 1821, at 350 leagues beyond the Southern borders of Egypt, ascending the BahrelAbyad, or white river, which appeared to be the principal branch of the Nile, and which possibly might lead to its real source. But, not to anticipate those facts which we shall make the subject of another relation, we proceed to the first journey of M. Cailliaud, which M. Jomard undertook to revise and publish. Interesting himself principally about mineralogy, M. Cailliand, at the age of twenty-five, had travelled over Holland, Italy, Switzerland, and a part of Turkey in Europe. Attracted by the renown of Egyptian wonders, he repaired to Constantinople in the beginning of the year 1815, and landed at Alexandria on the 12th of May of the same year. Being well received by M. Drouetti, consul general of France, he made a voyage with him to the second cataract, and soon after his return, honored with the confidence of Mohamed Aly Pacha, he undertook for him a commission to search for mines in the neighbouring desarts of Egypt. In the prosecution of which he had the rare good fortune to obtain, as Inter preter, one of the frenchmen who, after the departure of the army of France from the east, had entered the service of the Mamelukes; and he set out on the 2nd of November 1816 with six men, eight dromedaries, and provisions for a month, directing his course to Redesyeh, upon the right side of the Nile, towards the borders of the Red Sea. This is the first excursion of the French mineralogist, which is described in this first itinerary. After six days march in the desart, he arrived at Mount Zabarah, and found again the famous emerald mines, which were only known from the suspicious accounts given by the Arabs; but this traveller saw them in the state the engineers of the ancients had left them; he penetrated through a great many excavations of vast depth, where in some parts 400 men must have worked at once; and the cords, baskets, tools of various kinds, and even the lamps were there stil! after so many ages. Near this is a little town, which had been some time forgotten; a great many houses are still standing, and in the middle of them are temples built in the Egyptian style, and some parts of walls covered with Grecian Inscriptions. Still farther on, upon the borders of the Red Sea, he discovered a mountain of sulphur, formerly worked, and the evident marks of an ancient volcano. In these countries there is a tradition relative to an ancient commercial road, which conducted in an oblique direction from the North to the South East, from Coptos upon the Nile, to Berenice on the Red Sea. In crossing the desart, which separates the river from the sea, twice, at different places, M. Cailliaud thought he recognised several stations destined to receive caravans, and reservoirs to allay thirst, belonging to this same commercial road to India through Egypt, and which, according to his direction, is at the place where d'Anville and M. Gos selin fixed the ancient Berenice. To these topographical observa tions, M. Cailliaud adds a great able: he departed from thence on the 14th of February on the 20th be went to Cairo, and on the 29th to Alexandria, where the Pacha then resided. Such were the circumstances, and such were the various results of M. Cailliaud's travels to the East of the Thebaid, which he gives an account of in his first journal. The second relates to a journey in the West, and the reader will follow him in this with as much curiosity and interest; he speaks of those islands of verdure, disseminated in the midst of the seas of sand in Libya: he expected to find there a new civilization, and the ruins of that which Egyptian power had formerly introduced and brought to perfection. "Wishing for some time," says M. Cailliaud in his second itinerary, "to visit the great Oasis, which had not yet been seen but by travellers passing by, I took advantage of the moment when my presence was not necessary at the emerald mines to make this interesting journey; I quitted Cairo in consequence on the 26th of March 1818, and went to Syout to Mohamed Bey, governor of Upper Egypt; he willingly gave me orders to take camels, dromedaries, and guides. "After a long navigation upon the Nile I arrived at Esné, where the death of Ahmed Bey, son-in-law of the Pacha, retarded my voyage. As a Frenchman, I was called in to see him, for in Egypt a European is always considered as a physician. 66 When I arrived, he was no more, an inflammatory fever had carried him off: I found him covered with a cashemere (shawl), surrounded by his Mamelukes and two dervises, who were in waiting to make the accustomed prayers, though I assured them he was dead. For eight days there were processions of weeping persons, at the end of which time the burial took place with great pomp, with the sound of drums, accompanied by the cries and shrieks of all the women in the town. Ahmed Bey was much esteemed for his goodness of disposition." M. Cailliaud was fifteen days before he could depart from Esné. On the 25th of June 1818, he set out from thence for the West to wards the Oasis of Thebes, where he arrived on the 29th in the evening, after having traversed fifty leagues across the desart. Several Europeans had visited it, but none of them mentioned there being any antique monuments, though M. Cailliaud discovered several of the greatest interest; in the Western part of the Oasis, near Beyrys, a temple quite in the Egyptian style, the façade of which is entirely ornamented with hieroglyphics, and the sanctuary has an arched roof, which has not been remarked in any other Egyptian monument; to the west of this Egyptian building there is a Roman temple of brick, which seemed as a place of worship for the Coptic christians; at Bychy-jou, to the north of Beyrys, are some Roman ruins; a little more to the north is an Egyptian temple, the inside of the walls decorated with hieroglyphicks; at El-Kargeb, the chief town in the Oasis and peopled with about two thousand inhabitants, are the ruins of a small Egyptian temple; a little to the west, are more than two hundred Roman tombs of bricks, in the form of arcades; and, towards the north west of the town, another Egyptian temple worthy for its grandeur and magnificence to be placed in the rank of those in the Thebaid, its length being 191 feet without counting three PYLONES which precede it at long intervals,and are entirely covered with hieroglyphicks carefully executed and painted; more to the north-east is a large fortified Roman castle, the walls of which are 45 feet high and twelve thick with buttresses: at different places are other ruins of various ages, equally worthy of interest, and upon different temples are several Greek inscriptions, one of which has more than nine thousand letters. In traversing the Oasis from the south to the north M. Cailliaud discovered, measured and sketched monuments that no European in modern times ever saw before him. All these discoveries were made before the 11th of July, and on the 12th the traveller set out for the Nile, going along the road from ElKargeh to Farchiout, which appears to have been frequented by the ancients. . From thence M. Cailliaud went again to Esné across the Libyan mountains, and, having learnt that for want of water the emerald mines did not produce much, and desirous of seeing his family and country, he resolved to return to France. He went then to Cairo, took leave of the viceroy promising to return, and, provided with the most honorable recommendations from Mr. Salt the English consul general, and from the venerable Nestor in French erudition M. Dacier, perpetual secretary of the royal academy of Belles-Lettres, he embarked at Alexandria on the 6th of November and arrived at Marseilles on the 28th of the same month; rich in recollections and happy, he says, in adding something to the labors of learned men and French artists. His wishes have undoubtedly been accomplished; and the history of his modern discoveries in the country of the old Egyptian dominion gives M. Cailliaud, though preceded in publication by an English traveller who notwithstanding did not see these places till after him, the priority of observation; and it is an honorable claim to have been the first who risked his life to seek in the heart of desarts and in the midst of a superstitious and cruel population the ancient traces of Egyptian genius. Other travellers have gone to the Oasis, following the steps of M. Cailliaud, and it is to give each of them their share of zeal and success, that in this analysis we have so carefully marked the dates of the principal excursions of the French traveller. A little to the north-west of the Oasis of Thebes, there is another smaller one, known by the name of El-Dakkel: there is a way to go to Manfalout upon the Nile, or rather to the Oasis of Thebes, in setting out from El-Kargeh; and M. Drouetti, consul-general of France, having made a journey by this route, and having seen some considerable Egyptian, Greek, and Roman ruins, that no European ever saw before, sent his itinerary to M. Jomard, who annexed it to that of M. Cailliaud. It is to him, indeed, that we owe Most of the chapters in the work are by M. Jomard; the first contains the explanations of the plates and maps, and in the fourth he has reprinted the inscriptions already engraven after the drawings of M. Cailliaud, in the copper-plates 3, 8, 23, and 24. The most ancient are in hieroglyphick characters the others in Greek, in Coptic, in Latin, and Arabic; and to the inscriptions found to the east and west of Thebes are added some other inscriptions, copied by M. Cailliaud, in Upper Egypt, and amongst these is that on a pedestalat Philac, so clearly explained by M. Letronne, member of the Institute, and which is thought to have some connection with the Obelisk at Philae covered with hieroglyphicks, upon which M. Champollion, jun. has already published his observations. In general the inscriptions known by the copies of M. Cailliaud will offer many difficulties to the critic, who shall endeavour to explain them; this traveller not being properly prepared for the difficult task of exploring these monuments. This is not the place to enter into any details on this subject, it will be sufficient for us to say, that most of these inscriptions bear historical dates, name several sovereigns who were masters of the country, mention the worship of several divinities, and that the large inscription, copied from the Temple of El-Kargeh, contains new and curious facts upon the interior administration of Egypt. It is in the time of the Emperor Galba, and dated the second year of his reign; yet every body knows that Galba only reigned seven months, from the 9th of June, 68 to the 16th of January, 69. But the beginning of the Egyptian year, fixed in the time of Augustus, at the 29th of August, was used in counting the years of the Emperor's reign, each new Egyptian year being that of a new year of the reign: and the time, however short, which had elapsed between the accession of the Prince, and the renewal of the year, being counted as the first of his reign. Galba mounted the throne on the 9th of June; the time from this day to the 29th of August, was counted as his first year, and the second began this same day, the 29th of August, and lasted to his death, which took place the 16th of the following January. It is thus easy to comprehend, how a public act, made under Galba, could be dated the second year of his reign. Some Coptic inscriptions, copied by M. Cailliaud, are given in a very bad state, and criticism will scarcely be able to restore them. One of them is not quite in such a bad state, and we shall here insert the translation by R. Champollion, jun. in order to give our readers an idea of the writings, left by the venerable fathers of the desart in their own tongue: it is taken from the catacombs of Faras, in Nubia. Gospel according to Mark. Beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, Son of God, according to what is written in the Prophet, Isaiah. M. Jomard has given explanations of all these inscriptions in a recent publication, wherein he has enumerated the principal discoveries made in Egypt from the commencement of the nineteenth century, and described the state of preservation of the monuments and the present government of Egypt; he has also made remarks on the emerald mines and the old Commercial-road, and observations on the Oasis in general; he has likewise given an explanation of the copper-plates, and a catalogue of the antiquities collected by M. Cailliaud for the French King's cabinet: and lastly, an appendix, containing different things relative to this traveller, and some details upon the first results of his new excursions in the Oasis, in Nubia and Abyssinia; where he is accompanied by the ardent wishes and the just anxiety of all the lovers of literature, who know his zeal and the dangers that menace him in regions almost unknown. EPISTLES BY MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS. MARY to Rizzio.-February 1566. Come, I command thee! all thy terrors calm! The hate which now in Darnley's bosom lives, Epistle from MARY to her surviving UNCLES.—April 3, 1566. Friends of my heart, by absence made more dear, And her your wisdom blam'd, your kindness lov'd, Now to my direst tale of wrongs attend! Now prove my fame's defence, my misery's friend! There are sufficient historical documents to prove that Morton, and the other conspiring nobles, endeavoured to make Darnley jealous of Rizzio's intercourse with Mary, and that they succeeded in their attempt; but I cannot allow that these confederates believed themselves the calumny, which for their own base designs they chose to promulgate, as both external and internal evidence were invincibly strong against its truth. In the first place, though she had been educated at the Court of France, it was at a time when the utmost decorum of manners and strictness of morals prevailed there, as the influence of Catherine de Medicis had not yet superseded that of her predecessor, or of the many virtuous, accomplished Princesses who still graced the court. In the second place, she came to Scotland at the age of nineteen with an unblemished character, and, though it was well known that she had been the object of more than one romantic passion, her cruelty, and not kindness, had exposed her to censure. In the third place, she lived a widow from the age of nineteen to twenty-two, and during that time, though exposed to the vigilent and uncandid observations of her enemies, not even their remorseJess hatred could discover an opportunity for slandering her fair fame, a circumstance wholly inconsistant with the unchaste inclinations which were afterwards imputed to her. In the fourth place, at the age of twenty-two, she married the man she loved, the man of her own free choice, and had been a wife only a few months, and was within twelve weeks of being a mother, when she was accused of intriguing with her secretary Rizzio, an ill-looking, and, some say, elderly Italian adventurer. No, not even the bitter malignity of partyspirit, could believe so improbable a calumny, though it delighted to propagate it for its own purposes, nor could Darnley himself, in his cooler moments, be ju my opinion deluded by it.-Vide Miss Benger's interesting Memoirs of Mary.. Eur. Mag. March, 1823. B |