fphinxes, ftatues, coloffal figures, and ru ins, fo magnificent that the imagination is kept in continual admiration and amazement. Were the ground, occupied by the various entrances, porticos, and courts, appertaining to the temple, measured,

we

fhould find the whole was, at leaft, half a league in circumference; and that Diodorus Siculus was not deceived, when he allowed it that extent.

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The plain, lying between Carnac and Luxor, is not lefs than a league in length, and was once covered with the houfes of the Egyptians, who lived in that eastern part Thebes. Though, according to Diodorus Siculus (2), they were five ftories high, and folidly built, they have not been able to refift the ravages of time and conquerors, but are totally deftroyed (a). The ground is at prefent much raised, by the annual floodings

(z) Diodorus Siculus, lib. 1.

(a) Pocock, deceived by this total deftruction, imagined Thebes formerly contained no great buildings, except the temples, and that the inhabitants there lived in huts, or tents, &c. The teftimony of Diodorus Siculus refutes this affertion,

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of the river, which has covered it with feveral feet of mud, and the ruins are below the furface. Corn, flax, and vegetables, grow in the very places where, three thoufand years ago, public fquares, palaces, and numerous edifices, were the admiration of the enlightened people who inhabited them. At the farther end of this plain is the village of Luxor, near which are the avenues and remains of another temple, ftill more ruinous than the firft. Its extent is fpacious, and fo are its courts, which are entered under porticos fupported by columns forty feet high, without eftimating the bafe, buried under the fand. Pyramidal majestic gates, abounding in hieroglyphics; the remains of walls built with flags of granite, and which the barbarity of men only could overturn; rows of coloffal marble figures, forty feet high, one third buried in the ground; all declare what the magnificence of the principal edifice, the fcite of which is known by a hill of ruins, must have been. But nothing can give a more fublime idea of its grandeur than the two obelisks, by which it was embellished, and which feem to have been placed there

by

by giants, or the Genii of fable. They are each a folid block of granite, feventy-two feet high, above the furface, and thirty-two in circumference; but, being funk deep in the fand and mud, they may well be fuppofed ninety feet from the bafe to the fummit. The one is fplit, towards the middle; the other perfectly preferved. The hieroglyphics they contain, divided into columns, and cut in bas-relief projecting an inch and a half, do honour to the fculptor; the hardness of the stone has preserved them from being injured by the air. Nothing can be more majestic than thefe obelisks. Egypt is the fole country in the world where men have performed works like thefe; yet there is not a city on the face of the globe where they would not become its grandeft ornament.

Such, Sir, are the most remarkable monuments found at prefent, on the eastern fide of Thebes. Their very afpect would awaken the genius of a polished nation, but the Turks and Copts, crushed to duft beneath an iron fceptre, behold them without aftonishment, and build huts, which fearcely can fcreen them from the fun, in their neighbourhood.

Thefe

These barbarians, if they want a mill-ftone, do not blush to overturn a column, the fupport of a temple or portico, and faw it in pieces. Thus abject does defpotifm render

men!

I have the honour to be, &c.

LETTER

LETTER IV.

THE WESTERN PART OF THEBES DESCRIBED.

A vifit to the tombs of the Kings of Thebes, dug in the mountain, through fubterranean paffages. Sarcophagi, galleries, and hieroglyphics defcribed. Obfervations on the grand temple, the roof of which was fupported by Square pillars, bearing ftatues. Parts of a prodigious colofal figure found among these ruins. The ruins of Memnonium, denoted by heaps of marble, and rows of ftatues, either mutilated or funk a third of their height in the earth, and particularly ly the celebrated coloffal figure of Memnon, famous among the antients for the founds it articulated at fun-rifing.

To M. L. M.

Grand Cairo.

THE villages of Gournou and MedinetAbou, built where the weftern part of Thebes once flood, are furrounded by grand ruins. One league weftward of the firft are the grottos

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