here is not a single cartouche or oval
wanting. It has been found engraved on one of the walls of a small
chamber in the large temple of Abydos."

An important stone bearing a Greek inscription with equivalent
Egyptian hieroglyphics has been discovered by Professor Lepsius, at
San, the former Tanis, the chief scene of the grand architectural
undertakings of Remeses II. The Greek inscription consists of
seventy-six lines, in the most perfect preservation, dating from the
time of Ptolemy Euergetes I. (B.C. 238). The hieroglyphical
inscription has thirty-seven lines. It was also found that a demotic
inscription was ordered to be added by the priests, on a stone or
brass stele, in the sacred writing of the Egyptians and in Greek
characters; this is unfortunately wanting. The contents of the
inscription are of great interest. It is dated the ninth year the
seventh Apellaeus--seventeen Tybi, of the reign of Euergetes I. The
priests of Egypt came together in Canopus to celebrate the birthday of
Euergetes, on the fifth Dios, and his assumption of the royal honor on
the twenty-eighth of the same month, when they passed the decree here
published. They enumerate all the good deeds of the King, amongst them
the merit of having recovered in a military expedition the sacred
images carried off in former times by the Persians, and order great
honors to be paid in reward for his services. This tablet of
calcareous stone with a rounded top, is about seven feet high, and is
completely covered by the inscription. The discovery of this stone is
of the greatest importance for hieroglyphical studies.

We may mention here another inscribed tablet, the celebrated Isiac
table in the Museum at Turin. It is a tablet in bronze, covered with
Egyptian figures or hieroglyphics engraved or sunk, the outlines being
filled with silvering, forming a kind of niello. It was one of the
first objects that excited an interest in the interpretation of
hieroglyphics, and elicited learned solutions from Kircher and others.
It is now considered to be one of those pseudo-Egyptian productions so
extensively fabricated during the reign of Hadrian.

[Illustration: EGYPTIAN COLUMN.]

The Egyptian obelisks also present important inscriptions. Of these
the most ancient is that of Heliopolis.

We have selected these few examples of Egyptian inscriptions for their
celebrity. Almost every Egyptian monument, of whatever period,
temples, statues, tablets, small stat