Ruins of Ancient Cities Part 29

We shall finish this account by selecting a pa.s.sage from Rollin:--"Such were the famous Egyptian Pyramids, which, by their figure as well as size, have triumphed over the injuries of time and the barbarians. But what efforts soever men may make, their nothingness will always appear.

These pyramids were tombs; and there is still to be seen in the middle of the largest, an empty sepulchre, cut out of one entire stone, about three feet deep and broad, and a little above six feet long[368]. Thus all this bustle, all this expense, and all the labours of so many thousand men, ended in procuring a prince, in this vast and almost boundless pile of building, a little vault six feet in length. Besides, the kings who built these pyramids had it not in their power to be buried in them, and so did not enjoy the sepulchre they had built. The public hatred which they incurred, by reason of their unheard-of cruelties to their subjects, in laying such heavy tasks upon them, occasioned their being interred in some obscure place, to prevent their bodies from being exposed to the fury and vengeance of the populace.

"This last circ.u.mstance, which historians have taken particular notice of, teaches us what judgment we ought to pa.s.s on these edifices, so much boasted of by the ancients. It is but just to remark and esteem the n.o.ble genius which the Egyptians had for architecture; a genius that prompted them from the earliest times, and before they could have any models to imitate, to aim in all things at the grand and magnificent, and to be intent on real beauties, without deviating in the least from a n.o.ble simplicity, in which the highest perfection of the art consists.

But what idea ought we to form of those princes, who considered as something grand, the raising, by a mult.i.tude of hands and by the help of money, immense structures, with the sole view of rendering their names immortal, and who did not scruple to destroy thousands of their subjects to satisfy their vain-glory! They differed very much from the Romans, who sought to immortalise themselves by works of a magnificent kind, but, at the same time, of public utility.

"Pliny gives us, in few words, a just idea of these pyramids, when he calls them a foolish and useless ostentation of the wealth of the Egyptian kings--_Regum pecuniae otiosa ac stulta ostentatio_,--and adds, that, by a just punishment, their memory is buried in oblivion."[369]

END OF VOL. I.

LONDON: BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Plutarch; Diodorus; Rollin; Sandwich.

[2] Pliny; Strabo; Plutarch; Diodorus; Wilkinson.

[3] Simon; Count Fedor de Karacray; Malte-Brun.

[4] "aegina abounds," says Wheler, "with a sort of red-legged partridge, against which, by order of the Epitropi, or the chief magistrate of the town, all, both young and old, go out yearly, as the pigmies of old did against the cranes, to war with, and to break their eggs before they are hatched; otherwise, by their mult.i.tudes, they would so destroy and eat up the corn, that they would inevitably bring a famine every year upon the place."

[5] Mr. C. R. c.o.c.kerell and Mr. John Foster; W. Linckh and Baron Haller.

[6] Wheler; Chandler; Barthelemi; Sandwich; Lusieri; Clarke; Dodwell; Williams; Leake.

[7] Rollin.

[8] Livy, Cicero, Diodorus Siculus, Rollin, Brydone; Encyl. Lond., Brewster's Encyl.

[9] Dionysius of Halicarna.s.sus;--Sir W. Gell.

[10] Jose Almana.

[11] Browne.

[12] Myos Hormos.

[13] Four hundred and fifty talents of gold. See 2 Chron. viii. 18.

This, we may suppose, was the gross sum received; not the profit.

[14] A.M. 3685. Ant. J. C. 321. Diod. lib. xviii. p. 608, 610.

[15] This author lived in the fifteenth century.

[16] Earl of Sandwich.

[17] Some have commended Ptolemy for permitting the architect to put his name in the inscription which was fixed on the tower, instead of his own. It was very short and plain, according to the manner of the ancients. _Sostratus Cnidius Dexiphanis F. Diis Servatoribus pro navigantibus_, _i. e._, "Sostratus the Cnidian, son of Dexiphanes, to the protecting deities, for the use of sea-faring people." But certainly Ptolemy must have very much undervalued that kind of immortality which princes are generally very fond of, to suffer that his name should not be so much as mentioned in the inscription of an edifice so capable of immortalising him. What we read in Lucian, concerning this matter, deprives Ptolemy of a modesty, which indeed would be very ill-placed here. This author informs us that Sostratus, seeing the king determined to engross the whole glory of that n.o.ble structure to himself, caused the inscription with his own name to be carved in the marble, which he afterwards covered with lime, and thereon put the king's name. The lime soon mouldered away: and by that means, instead of procuring the king the honour with which he had flattered himself, served only to discover to future ages his unjust and ridiculous vanity.--ROLLIN.

[18] Savary.

[19] Lib. xxii. c. 16.

[20] See his observations on the supposed conflagration of the Alexandrian library, with a commentary on the 5th and 6th sections of the first chapter of the tenth book of Quintilian.

[21] Rees.

[22] Browne.

[23] A very curious instance is afforded by Bruce, who wrote an account of Alexandria, and, literally, did not spend one entire day in the city.

He was at sea on the morning of the 20th of June, 1768, previously to his landing in Alexandria, (see Bruce's Travels, v. i. p. 7,) and in the afternoon he left that city for Rosetta.--CLARKE.

[24] Browne.

[25] After the English were in possession of Alexandria, a subscription was opened by the military and naval officers for the purpose of removing the prostrate obelisk to England. With the money so raised they purchased one of the vessels, sunk by the French in the old port of Alexandria: this was raised, and prepared for the reception of the obelisk. The French had already cleared away the heaps of rubbish which enveloped it, and the English turned it round, and found it in a fine state of preservation. It was moved towards the vessel, when an order arrived from the Admiralty, prohibiting the sailors from being employed at this work. No further attempts have been made to remove this fine monument to Europe.--ANON.

[26] Wilkinson.

[27] Sonnini.

[28] He gives a full description of them.--Part iv. p. 285, 4to.

[29] Sat. Mag.

[30] Diodorus Siculus; Quintilian; Ammia.n.u.s Marcellinus; Abulfaragius; Prideaux; Rollin; Shaw; Harris; Gibbon; Johnson; Drake; Savary; Sonnini; Sandwich; Rees; Miot; Clarke; Wilkinson; Browne; Parker; Knight.

[31] Rollin; Sandwich.

[32] A.M. 3604, A.C. 300.

[33] Wheler; Poc.o.c.ke; Chandler; Rees; Sandwich; Porter; Kinneir; Buckingham; Carne; Robinson; Walpole.

[34] Rollin.

[35] Rollin.

[36] Clarke.

[37] The devastations of time and war have effaced the old city. The stranger in vain inquires for vestiges of its numerous edifices, the theatre, the gymnasium, the temples, and the monuments it once boasted, contending even with Athens in antiquity and in favours conferred by the G.o.ds.--CHANDLER.

[38] See Tiryns.

[39] Lib. vii.