ain, and the plan of which may yet be traced. Thanks to the phonetic
system, we now know that this musical statue is one of Amunoph the
Second, who lived many centuries before the Trojan war. The truth is,
the Greeks, who have exercised almost as fatal an influence over modern
knowledge as they have a beneficial one over modern taste, had no
conception of anything more ancient than the Trojan war, except Chaos.
Chaos is a poetic legend, and the Trojan war was the squabble of a few
marauding clans.

'Where are the records of the great Assyrian monarchy? Where are the
books of the Medes and Persians? Where the learned annals of Pharaohs?

'Fortunate Jordan! Fortunate Ilissus! I have waded through the sacred
waters; with difficulty I traced the scanty windings of the classic
stream. Alas! for the exuberant Tigris; alas! for the mighty Euphrates;
alas! for the mysterious Nile!'

It is curious that no allusion whatever to the Jews has yet turned up on
any Egyptian monuments. But upon the walls of Medoenet Habu I observed,
more than once repeated, the Ark borne in triumph. This is not a
fanciful resemblance. It responds in every particular.

I have noticed the history of Ancient Egypt, because some knowledge of
it is necessary to illustrate Thebes. I quit a subject which, however
curious, is probably of too confined an interest for the general reader,
and I enter in his company the City of the Hundred Gates.

The Nile winds through the valley of Thebes--a valley formed by ranges
of mountains, which on one side defend it from the great Lybian desert,
and on the other from the rocky wilderness that leads to the Red Sea. On
each side of the stream are two great quarters of ruins. On the side of
the Red Sea are Luxor and Karnak, on the opposite bank the great temple
called the Memnonion, and the various piles which, under the general
title of Medoenet Habu, in all probability among other structures
comprise the principal palace of the more ancient Pharaohs. On the
Lybian side, also, are the cemeteries of the great city-the mummy caves
of Gornou, two miles in extent; above them, excavated in the mountains,
the tombs of the Queens, and in the adjacent valley of Beban-el-Maluk
the famous tombs of the Kings. The population of the City of the Hundred
Gates now consists of a few Arab families, who form four villages of
mud huts clustered round those gigantic columns and mighty obelisks, a
single one of which is sought for by the gr