feet high; the walls and pilasters were covered with hieroglyphics beautifully cut, and with groupes of large figures in bas-relief, in the highest state of preservation. At the end of the sanctuary were four figures in a sitting posture, about twelve feet high, sculptured out of the living rock, and well preserved. In bearing testimony to the great merit of Mr. Belzoni for his researches in this temple, and for his exertions in clearing away the immense mass of sand, Mr. Salt observes, that the opening of the temple of Ipsambul was a work of the utmost difficulty, and one that required no ordinary talent to surmount, nearly the whole, when Mr. Belzoni first planned the undertaking, being buried under a bed of loose sand, upwards of fifty feet in depth.' This temple,' he adds, ' is on many accounts peculiarly interesting, as it satisfactorily tends to prove that the arts, as practised in Egypt, descended from Ethiopia, the style of the sculpture being in several respects superior to any thing that has yet been found in Egypt.'

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At Thebes Mr. Belzoni succeeded in making several very remarkable discoveries. Among other things, he uncovered a row of statues in the ruins of Carnac, as large as life, having the figures of women with heads of lions, all of hard black granite, and in num ber about forty. Among these was one of white marble, about the size of life, and in perfect preservation, which he conceived to be a statue of Jupiter Ammon, holding the ram's head on his knees. On his second visit to Thebes he discovered a colossal head of Orus, of fine granite. It measured ten feet from the neck to the top of the mitre, was finished in a style of exquisite workmanship, and is in a state of good preservation. He brought away to Cairo one of the arms belonging to this statue, which with the head, he thinks would form an admirable specimen of the grandeur and execution of Egyptian sculpture; and as he succeeded so well in removing the head of the younger Memnon, as it is called, now deposited in the British Museum, we have no doubt he would be equally successful, if encouraged, in conveying the one in question to Alexandria. Speaking of the Memnonian bust-' he has the singular merit,' says Mr. Salt, of having removed from Thebes to Alexandria this celebrated piece of sculpture, to accomplish which it was necessary, after dragging it down upwards of a mile to the water side, to place it on board a small boat, to remove it thence to another djerm at Rosetta, and afterwards to land and lodge it in a magazine at Alexandria-all which was most surprisingly effected with the assistance solely of the native peasantry, and such simple machinery as Mr. Belzoni was able to get made under his own direction at Cairo. In fact, his great talents and uncommon genius for mechanics have enabled him, with singular success, both at Thebes and other places, to discover objects of the rarest value in

antiquity, that had long baffled the researches of the learned, and with trifling means to remove colossal fragments which appear, by their own declaration, to have defied the efforts of the able engineers who accompanied the French army.'*

While thus employed in making researches among the ruins of Thebes, and occupied in his observations on the burial-grounds of the Egyptians, he conceived that he had discovered an infallible clue to the Egyptian catacombs; and such was the certainty of the indications which he had noticed, that, by following them, he discovered no less than six tombs in the valley which is known by the name of Biban El Moluck,' or the Tombs (or rather Gates) of the Kings,' in a part of the mountains which, to ordinary observers, presented no appearance that could possibly hold forth the slightest prospect of success. All of these are excavations in the mountains, and from their perfect state, owing to the total exclusion of intruders, and probably of the external air, they are said to convey a more correct idea than any discovery hitherto made of Egyptian magnificence and posthumous splendour. The passage from the front entrance to the innermost chamber in one of them measured 309 feet, the whole extent of which is cut out of the living rock; the chambers are numerous; the sides of the rock every where as white as snow, and covered with paintings of well shaped figures, al fresco, and with hieroglyphics quite perfect. The colours of the paintings are as fresh as if they had been laid on the day before the opening was made. It was in one of the chambers of this tomb that Mr. Belzoni discovered the exquisitely beautiful sarcophagus of alabaster which we noticed in our last Number, and which he describes as being nine feet five inches long, by three feet nine inches wide, and two feet and one inch high, carved within and without with hieroglyphics and figures in intaglio, nearly in a perfect state, sounding like a bell, and as transparent as glass.' From the extraordinary magnificence of this tomb, Mr. Belzoni conceives that it must be the depository of the remains of Apis, in which idea he is the more confirmed by having found the carcass of a bull embalmed with asphaltum in the innermost room.

"Of this tomb,' says Mr. Salt, I have forwarded some account to England. It consists of a long suite of passages and chambers, covered with sculptures and paintings in the most perfect preservation, the tints of which are so resplendent, that it was found scarcely possible to imitate them with the best water-colours made in England; and which in fact are executed on a principle and scale of colour that would make them, I conceive, retain their lustre

* Description de l'Egypte. Antiquités. tom. xiv. livrais. 2. p. 240. We mentioned the attempt to blow off the wig in our last Number. The right shoulder has actually been taken off, but it does not appear to have been done recently.

even by the side of a Venetian picture. The sarcophagus of alabaster here discovered is a monument of the taste, delicate workmanship, and skill in cutting so fragile a material, which will perhaps remain for ever unrivalled." In fact, Mr. Belzoni is so enraptured with the grandeur and magnificence with which this particular tomb has impressed his mind, that he has actually undertaken a third voyage up the Nile for the purpose of executing a perfect model of it in wax, with all the statuary, bas-reliefs, and paintings in their due proportions, in order that the European world may have the means of duly appreciating the splendour and the art displayed in the catacombs of the ancient Egyptians. We hope, however, that the trustees of the British Museum will spare no expense in procuring this extraordinary sarcophagus to place by the side of that which is supposed to have contained the remains of Alexander. We have no doubt of the ability of Mr. Belzoni to execute the task of getting it safely down the Nile.

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We have already mentioned the discoveries made by Mr. Belzoni in uncovering the front of the Great Sphinx, and the several articles found between its legs and paws, and which are now deposited in the British Museum. 'Such,' says Mr. Salt, are the principal undertakings which have been accomplished by Mr. Belzoni in Egypt and Nubia; but besides these, he has been signally successful in removing many valuable pieces of antiquity-in the discovery of statues and other interesting objects-his researches being evidently carried on with a very superior judgment.' He adds, 'I feel great satisfaction in thus being able to certify the extraordinary ability of Mr. Belzoni, the result of whose operations I have had such frequent opportunities of admiring; and I am more particularly delighted by his discoveries, from the circumstance that they have added many new objects of attraction to European travellers, whose society is at all times agreeable in so remote and uncultivated a region as Egypt."* We have been thus particular in recording the testimony of Mr. Salt in favour of this foreigner, in consequence of an attempt which we perceive is making to depreciate his labours. It might have been expected that these discoveries, made in the true spirit of enthusiasm, but communicated without ostentation, would have escaped the acrimony of invidious criticism;--but it is not so: M. Jomard, a member of the French Institute, and one of the committee, we believe, who smuggled into Africa the traveller Bahdia, better known by the name of Ali Bey, has thought fit, in the Journal des Savans,' to attack (in a Note' as illiberal as it is unjust) Mr. Belzoni, for addressing a letter to the late M. Visconti, giving a brief sketch of his proceedings, and of the success which had attended his researches in Egypt. In this letter, written in a modest

* From a MS. memorandum of Mr. Salt.

VOL. XIX. NO. XXXVII.

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and unassuming tone, M. Jomard finds (as he is pleased to think) the author appropriating to himself, as new discoveries, those which belong to the French. Not content with claiming for his countrymen all the discoveries that are now making, and that may hereafter be made, M. Jomard appropriates to them all that have hitherto been made in Egypt. France,' he says, in preference to any other nation in Europe, ought to be interested in all new researches of which this classical country shall be the object, since she has made so many sacrifices in order to discover its monuments, to study its climate and productions, and to develope, for the first Lime, to the scientific world, all its antiquities, which, though the admiration of thirty ages, were not on that account the better known.' And does M. Jomard expect to persuade 'the scientific world' that nothing was known of Egypt before the French savans, with an invading army at their heels, explored the ruins of Thebes, 'with its palaces and temples, its obelisks, its avenues of sphinxes, its colossal columns, its catacombs, and the tombs of its kings covered with paintings so brilliant, so well preserved? Does he hope to persuade the world that a Pococke, a Norden, a Niebhur, or a Hamilton, will shrink in a comparison with any one of those 'forty French savans' who remained so many months among the ruins of Thebes?-M. Jomard may flatter himself that he has made a wonderful discovery in proclaiming the statue sitting on the plain of Memnonium with the inscription on its legs to be the true Memnon-as if Pococke had not done the same thing long ago, and as if any one but Denon had ever doubted it. M. Jomard, however, is quite mistaken in supposing that Mr. Belzoni gave to the beautiful bust in the British Museum, (which we are indebted to his ingenuity for removing, after the French had tried to do it in vain,) the improper name of the young Memnon'-it is a hazardous and unauthorized term, about as well founded as the supposition that the head, which he and his brother-savans left with the face turned towards the heaven, when the time and events opposed themselves to their efforts of stirring still more than the enormous weight of the figure,'-but which, however, the efforts of a single Roman, aided by his own genius, easily accomplished, was that of Osymandyas. For the rest, M. Jomard may make himself easy about the alabaster sarcophagus. This extraordinary morsel' will, we doubt not, come to Europe-but not to Paris: there are mineralogists in London who can examine and describe it with as much accuracy as if it were submitted to a committee of the French Institute.

Of M. Jomard's hostility towards M. Belzoni, or rather, we suspect, towards the English, under whose auspices he is prosecuting his discoveries in Egypt, the 'Note' bears ample testimony throughout; the presumption of the writer is no less conspicuous;

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and the concluding paragraph exposes his ignorance in a matter in which he ought to have better informed himself, before he attempted to strip another of the laurels so justly his due. The subterraneous temple of Ipsambul,' says the critic, which M. Belzoni imagines himself to have discovered, had already been visited by many Europeans, particularly by Mr. Thomas Legh.' It happens that M. Belzoni, so far from pretending to have discovered it, merely says, 'I went to Nubia to examine the temple of Ipsambul;' and the only merit which he claims is that of having, by dint of patience and courage, after twenty-two days persevering labour, had the pleasure of finding himself in the temple of Ipsambul, where no European had ever before entered.' But it also happens that Mr. Thomas Legh not only did not visit Ipsambul, but was not within a day and a half's journey of it, and never once mentions its name,—we would therefore recommend M. Jomard to do justice to M. Belzoni, by frankly avowing that the first time he ever heard the name of Ipsambul was in that gentleman's letter to M. Visconti; for we are quite sure that he knows nothing of the discoveries made there by the late Sheik Ibrahim and Mr. Bankes, the only Europeans, we believe, who have proceeded so far up the Nile in the present century.*

But the most brilliant of M. Belzoni's labours, and perhaps the most arduous and extraordinary, is the opening of the second pyramid of Ghiza, known by the name of Cephrenes. Herodotus was informed that this pyramid had no subterraneous chambers, and his information, being found in latter ages to be generally correct, may

*The government of France was at no one period more jealous of the power of England, than the members of the French Institute are at this moment of her progress in science and the arts; an instance of it occurred at one of its recent sittings, which appeared to us (for we happened to be present) quite ludicrous. An officer of naval engineers, of the name of Dupin, having procured access to our dock-yards and laboratories, as well as to all the great manufactories of private individuals, presented to the Institute, on his return,' An Essay on the Progress of Gunnery, Engineering, &c. in Great Britain,' in which he particularly dwelt on the grandeur, magnificence, and convenient arrangement of the arsenal of Woolwich. During the reading of this report by the Duc de Raguse, the whole Institute sighed most deeply; and when he spoke of the high degrees of perfection to which the English had carried the steam engine, the hydraulic press, and the different combinations of those two machines-adding that by the first the effect was produced of two or three hundred horses, without noise and without confusion--and that by means of the latter the transport of provisions and forage became so easy as to supply in the greatest abundance the army of Portugal, in presence of an adversary who was destitute of every thing--when these and the many advantages which England derived from the excellence of her machinery were enumerating, nothing was beard but groans from every corner of the room.-. But when the reporter desired that it might be recollected that it was to a Frenchman the steam-engine owed its origin; that the hydraulic press was a French invention; that the mechanic Brunel was a Frenchman, and that he is at this moment charged with the principal works carrying on in England--and, in fact, that there is nothing which the genius of Frenchmen has not been able to produce--the groans ceased, the clouds were dispelled, and all became calm, cheerful, and se rene.-(Rapport de l'Institut. Essai sur les Progrès de l'Artillerie, &c. Mars, 1818.)