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Previous to the year 1802, the hieroglyphics, or The revelations thus made have released Egypt sacred characters of the Egyptians, found in the from the plague of darkness. She is no longer a

sepulchres and on monuments, were a mystical scrawl, the unknown signs of an unknown tongue, which the learned gazed at with unavailing longings. But a stone, found three years before between Rosetta and the sea by a French officer of engineers, was destined to give the hint, which fell like a sudden spark of light upon their conjec

land of sorcery and mysticism, such as she appeared to the Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans; but thousands of years ago, her every-day life appears a prototype of our own. The hieroglyphics are at once manuscripts and pictures-illustrated books, speaking at once to the eye and the mind; and the genius of the people seems to have delighted in

nary life are painted on the walls. Study, gymnastics, feasts, banquets, wars, sacrifices, death, and funeral, are all faithfully delineated in these sepul

tures. This was the celebrated Rosetta Stone, perpetuating themselves in their records. "If we (now in the British Museum,) a fragment of black enter a tomb," says Mr. Gliddon, "we see the basalt, 3 feet in length, and originally 2 feet 5 deceased surrounded by his family, who offer him inches in breadth, and from 10 to 12 inches in their remembrances. The I had almost said thickness. The sculpture was not in itself of Christian-name, the profession, rank, and bloodgreat antiquity, dating 196 years before the Chris- relationship of each member of the family, are tian era. It contained two inscriptions-one in the written against him or her. The scenes of ordiGreek, and one in the popular Egyptian character, called Demotic or Enchorial, afterwards discovered not to have been much used before 700 years B. c.: but there was likewise a third, in hieroglyphics; chral illustrations of manners, which are often epic and it may be supposed with what interest it was in their character. You have the song with which discovered that these three were identical in sub- the Egyptian enlivened his labor in the field; the stance! They were an edict chiselled at Memphis, anthem, that, when living, he offered to his Crein honor of Ptolemy Epiphanes, and the con-ator; and the death-wail that accompanied his cluding sentence was in these words: -" That body to the grave. Every condition, every art, this decree should be engraved on a tablet of hard every trade, figures in this picturesque encyclopæ

stone, in hieroglyphics, enchorial, and Greek characters, and should be set up in first, second, and third-rate temples, before the statue of the everliving king."

The inscriptions, being identical, would of course repeat the name the same number of times; and the word Ptolemy, in its various inflections, being found in the Greek eleven times, the first business was to look for a corresponding word in the Demotic character. In this inscription a group of seven letters was found repeated eleven times; and

dia-from the monarch, priest, and warrior, to the artisan and herdsman. Then these tombs are real museums of antiquities-utensils, toilet-tables, inkstands, pens, books, the incense-bearer, and smelling-bottle, are found in them. The wheat which the Egyptian ate, the fruit that adorned his desserttable, peas, beans, and barley, which still germinate when replanted, are also discovered. The eggs, the desiccated remains of the very milk he had once used for his breakfast, even the trussed and roasted goose, of which the guests at his wake

these were discovered to compose the word Ptol- had partaken all these evidences of his humanity, mis, thus giving seven letters of the alphabet, from and a myriad more, exist, in kind, in the museums which the whole was afterwards deduced. But of Europe, to attest their former owner's declarathe hieroglyphic inscription'? How was it possi- tion to us, modern occidentals, athwart the oceans ble to interpret those representations of animals of time and the Atlantic, Homo sum; humani nihil and things, intended though they must be for the a me alienum puto. But not only do the scenes symbols of a language? Here and there some of them were enclosed in an oval. This was repeated again and again, and must no doubt be the name sought for. The middle figure was a recumbent geographical names, and characteristics of an inlioness, the Coptic name of which is laboi. Might finitude of Asiatic and African nations existing in

not the lioness represent the sound of the initial letter of her own name? It was a wild and fantastic conjecture, to which the explorer was no doubt driven by mere despair; but it was inspiration. The moment it was taken for granted that this was one letter of the name, the others were read with comparative ease; and thus were obtained, to begin with, the signs of seven hieroglyphic letters, PTOLMEES.

We of course cannot pretend to follow here the course of the discovery; but Mr. Gliddon declares, that with the aid of the published literary resources, any intelligent person may at this day read into English, direct from the hieroglyphics, words, phrases, and consecutive sentences, as easily as he would acquire any other oriental tongue. LIVING AGE. VOL. XXIII. 17

CCLXXXVI.

sculptured or painted on the temples or in the sepulchres furnish every detail concerning the Egyptians; they give us the portraits, history,

days long anterior to the Exode-many of whom have left no other record of their presence on earth, and others again whose names are preserved in the Hebrew Scriptures."

Not the least curious and important of the hie roglyphical revelations, is the synchronism which exists between the Scriptural annals and the monuments of Egypt. The names of some of the Pharaohs are not only the same, but they are identified in particulars of their history; and authenticated portraits of sovereigns incidentally referred to in the Bible are now exhibited in engravings throughout the Christian world. These portraits are carried back to 3500 years ago, (about the time of Joseph,) but the synchronism cannot be traced earlier than 971 в. с. This is unfortunate, as it made by the departed spirit. In these, however, which are forty-two in number, is found the whole, and more than the whole, decalogue.

would be very interesting to identify in their mon- | ments, and the Christian petitions for divine aid to uments the Pharaohs who were contemporary with observe them, they present only a series of selfSolomon, Moses, Joseph, and Abraham. The righteous assertions of innocence, supposed to be earliest, however, as yet reached is Shishak, the conqueror of Rehoboam, son of Solomon; and indeed, as the Bible does not mention by name the earlier sovereigns of Egypt, there is little probability of further advance in this interesting study. As for the supposed death of the Mosaic Pharaoh in the Red Sea, it is neither countenanced by the text of the Pentateuch-which merely relates the destruction of Pharaoh's host, chariots, and chosen captains-nor by the traditions of the Talmud, which expressly state that the king returned and reported the loss of his army. The hieroglyphics, however, are silent on both points. Neither has any trace at all been found in them of the patriarchal relations with Egypt. We may add that Mr. Gliddon makes the pertinent remark, that if the validity of hieroglyphical history be proved "from the Scriptures for the time succeeding Moses, in all those cases where either record refers to the events mentioned in the other, the authenticity of hieroglyphical monuments in affairs whereon the Bible is silent, and which antedate Moses by twenty centuries, cannot fairly be called in question." While mentioning portraits, let us descend to later times, and say that the portrait of Cleopatra, taken from the temple of Dendera, by no means establishes the Shakspearian authority with regard to the personal beauty of that "serpent of old Nile." The Cleopatra of history appears to have been celebrated only for her powers of fascination and the splendor of her court.

The earliest date of the sacred language is not known; but if the antiquaries are correct, there must be an error in the commonly-received interpretation of Bible chronology, the original fifteen hieroglyphic letters having been in common use only 250 years after Menes, the first Pharaoh. This would carry back the origin of hieroglyphics to near the time commonly assigned to Cain and Abel! The emblem of the scribe's palette, reedpen, and ink-bottle, is found about 3400 years в. с.; and books, indicated by the sign of the papyrus or scroll, are long antecedent to the time of Abraham. This language received afterwards some change, and in that form became more current as the hieratic or sacerdotal. About 700 years в. c. there was introduced an alphabetic kind of writing called the Demotic, Enchorial, or Epistolographic; and this remained in popular use till it was suppressed by the Roman imperial authority, and replaced by the Coptic alphabet, formed of Greek and Egyptian letters intermixed.

It is impossible to ascend to the origin of the mummies that are covered with extracts from this ritual. Mummification, as the science is now called, is supposed to have been earlier than the pyramids or tombs, the first mummies having been buried in the sand. The Necropolis at Memphis is twenty-two miles in length by about half a mile in breadth, and here, it is supposed, one fourth of the population of Egypt was buried. The Great Pyramid was built 4000 years ago; but supposing the period of mummification to be only 3000 years, Mr. Gliddon calculates that the number of mummies in Egypt is about 500,000,000. A Cairo journal, a year or two ago, went further; it counted up the quantity of cloth in the wrappers, and came to the conclusion that if the linen were manufactured into paper, it would bring into the pacha's treasury £4,200,000! The objection as to the vast space so many mummies would fill, is met by a calculation which shows that they could be contained in a cube half a mile in length, breadth, and height; although so far from being cramped in room, the tombs of a single individual sometimes cover several acres of subterranean ground.

Under the fourth dynasty the bodies were prepared by a saturation with natron, and were baked in ovens, and wrapped in woollen cloth. The sarcophagus of Cheops was a plain monolithic bin, and that of Mycerinus a rectangular chest, with an inscription in which the dead Osirian king is saluted with a sublime simplicity, "Live forever!" Under the twelfth dynasty linen is found in use, the bodies are partially gilded, and all the luxury in coffins had commenced, which, from the eighteenth dynasty down to the time of the Romans, remained at a great pitch of extravagance. Under the eleventh dynasty, round the " sides are usually painted the whole sepulchral equipment of the dead-his bows, arrows, quivers, shirts, wigs, mirrors, sandals, and cosmetics. They are, in fact, the pictorial portmanteau of an Egyptian gentleman twenty centuries before our era, as well as a bill of fare; his ducks, geese, haunches, shoulders, chops, bread, cakes, biscuits, flourhis drinks, water, beer, wine, white, northern, or Maræotic-his salt and pastiles are detailed at the head of these coffins." The eighteenth dynasty is the era of the introduction of bitumen, which became known to the Egyptians through their conquests of Assyria; and the new fashion changed the color of the mummies, which, since that epoch, are black, while those earlier embalmed are of the natural hue. By this time the system of idolatry had attained its full development; even the bodies of animals were at length embalmed as well as those of men; and the re

The prayer-book of the Egyptians, called the Book of the Dead, is traced as far back as 3200 В. С. It was a collection of hymns and liturgical prayers offered by and for the departed Egyptians; and extracts from it are met with on mummy cases, and every other object connected with death or religion. In this antique ritual are taught the doctrines of the soul's immortality and resurrection of the body; but instead of the Jewish command-ligious simplicity of the earlier mummies existed About the Augustan period the shape and if the death took place during the year, this

no more.

of the sarcophagus was changed, and the mummies were not wrapped in the human form, but of an equal thickness all down, and swathed in a coarsely painted cloth exhibiting portraits of the deceased.

The cost of these embalmments varied from £4 up to £250, according to the rank in life of the deceased, and the luxury of the coffin and ornaments. There are specimens still in existence which contain above 1000 yards of linen, varying in texture from good calico to superfine cambric.

was immediately cased over, and thus a small pyramid formed. If the king lived a second year, another course of stone or brick was added, and so on another and another, till, as in the case of the Great Pyramid, the solid materials thus piled over the chamber in the rock would suffice for the construction of a city. "The pyramid continued to be increased every year until the death of the king in whose reign it was erected, fresh courses being added each year of his life. When the king died, the work of enlargement ceased, and

The majority, however, belong to the middle the casing was put on the pyramid. This was

classes, and their cost is estimated at £60; but calculating them all at the cheapest-namely, £4-this would give an annual expense for manufacture of £666,000. For our own part, how ever, unless the lowest classes were mummified at the public cost, (which is very improbable,) we do not see how even £4 could have been paid for their funeral expenses; and as Mr. Gliddon remarks that only a single negro mummy has been found, although negroes were always very numerous in Egypt as domestic servants, there must, we think, have been a portion of the population allowed to moulder in the usual way. The whole of the revenue arising from this process belonged to the priests, "who were the physicians, apothecaries, mummy-makers, undertakers, scribes, and sextons, and who, besides, leased out the sepulchral excavations in which the bodies were to repose." They held also the monopoly of the linen cloth used for wrapping the body, the flax for which was grown and manufactured by themselves. The mummies made, however, were so strictly the property of the purchasers, that a debtor was obliged to give up in pledge to his creditors the remains of his ancestors; and if he died insolvent, his next relations were held bound, both in honor and law, to redeem them.

The pyramids, it is now known, were sepulchres for containing the mummies of the Pharaohs. "As to the epoch of those of Memphis," says Mr. Gliddon, "these were all built between the times of Noah and Abraham in the scale of Biblical chronology, and those of Menes, the first Pharaoh of Egypt, and the founder of the first dynasty at Memphis, and the thirteenth dynasty in collateral Egyptian hieroglyphical chronology. Thus all the Memphite pyramids existed and were ancient 2000 years before Christ. All the pyramids in lower Egypt are 4000 years old; and taking the pyramid of Meris, according to Lepsius' letters, built between 2151 and 2194 years before Christ, as the last of this series, the remainder will successively recede to above 5000 years ago."

When a king commenced his reign, a small isolated hill of rock was fixed upon for his tomb, and a chamber excavated in it, with a passage

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done by filling up the angles of the masonry with smaller stones, and then placing oblong blocks one upon another, so as to form steps from the base to the apex; after which, beginning at the top, and working downwards, these stones were bevelled off at the corners, so as to form one uniform angle, and give a smooth surface to the pyramid, leaving a perfect triangle. * Two conclusions will strike the observer; first, that a pyramid, being smooth from its base to its summit, was by its builders never meant to be reäscended; secondly, that the entrance was hermetically closed, never to be reöpened; although its location, to judge by classical and Arabian traditions of hieroglyphics on the exterior, was probably indicated by a royal tablet, or stele, commemorative of the Pharaoh interred in each sepulchre. The philosophical deduction from all this is, that the size of the pyramid is in direct proportion to the length of the king's reign in which it was constructed, having been begun at his accession, and finished at his death. Large pyramids indicate long reigns, and small pyramids short reigns. The sixty-nine pyramids, therefore, represent some seventy or eighty kingly generations, (two kings having been sometimes buried in the same pyramid,) the last of which race died before Abraham was born. Such is the law of pyramidal construction. Of its importance in chronology the reader can judge."

*

*

In the Great Pyramid there are several chambers; the Great Hall, the Kings' and Queens' Chamber, the Well, as it is called, &c.; and there are air-passages communicating from these with their external surface. The casing-stones were eight tons in weight, but were removed by the caliphs, so that the edifice can now be ascended as if by the steps of a stair. There is no danger either in the ascent or descent; although, in 1831, Mr. James Mayes, an English traveller, contrived to commit suicide by throwing himself from the summit.

The private tombs scattered around the regal pyramids are full of interest of the same kind; being covered with paintings of the manners, cus toms, genealogies, &c., of the ancient Egyptians to such an extent, that the antiquary Lepsius promises to write the court journal of the fourth

communicating with the surface. Around and Memphitic dynasty, which flourished five thousand over this a course of masonry was built in a four-years ago! "The manufacture of glass," Mr. sided figure, converging at the top, in general of Gliddon tells us, was known in Egypt 2000 limestone, but in four instances of sun-dried brick; years previously to its reported discovery by the of the spot, and is now dangerously and disgracefully ill-watered. The supply is both inadequate in quantity and bad in quality; the badness being of various degrees, from the insidiously unwholesome to the loathsome and fatal-in other words, from slow to rapid poisoning. In order to put this matter in the clearest light, let us briefly consult the natural history of our subject.

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Phœnicians; and the decimal system of numera- perfect harmony with the organic laws of the unition, units, tens, hundreds, thousands, and upwards, verse, which can never be violated with impunity, was current in the days of the Pyramids, or 4000 is the ideal goal of advancing civilization. years before the Arabs of Mohammed's era. In London town has outgrown the original resources the tomb of Eimei, architect of the pyramid of Shoopho, of the fourth dynasty, is an inventory of his wealth. There are, amongst other details, "835 oxen, 220 cows, with their calves, 2234 goats, 760 asses, and 974 rams." The numerals are hieroglyphical ciphers; and the same decimal system is found in the quarriers' marks on all the pyramids. Indeed, it became evident that perhaps, with the exception of steamboats, electrotypes, Daguerreotypes, the magnetic telegraph, chloroform, printing-presses, and cotton gunpowder, the arts and sciences were much the same at that early period in the Valley of the Nile as at this time in our own country. The drawings of the trades, as found pictured on the walls in the tombs, show the practical sort of people the Egyptians were. Corroborations of the last remark are to be found in the various paintings now extant of " carpenters at work, boat-building, musicians, poulterers, veterinary surgeons, wine-pressing, brick-making, weaving, ploughing, transporting of columns," &c. All these are illustrated by, and serve as illustrations of, that sacred language which, at the end of fifty ages, speaks to us from the tombs almost as intelligibly as it did to the priests at a time which could only be known to the Jewish patriarchs as an old-world tradition. Having now run through these lectures-although not in a cursory manner, for one must pick his steps while traversing such a mass of erudition-we have only to recommend the volume to the studious reader, as one from which he will receive as much general information on Egyptiological science as he could obtain by the perusal of a variety of more bulky, though not more learned, productions.

From the Spectator.

WATER IN LONDON.

LONDON pines and sickens for want of water! The paragon of modern cities, the unrivalled metropolis of the mightiest nation of the earth, is grovelling like a Calmuck camp in squalor, stench, and unwholesomeness, for want of one of the first necessaries of life. The fact illustrates a curious tendency in civilization to run in some respects a cyclical course. Allured by certain natural advantages of site, and chiefly by the abundance of water for domestic use and for the purposes of manufacture and transit, men congregate together and lay the foundation of great cities. In the lapse of ages, as their numbers and their activity increase, their own animal exuviæ, and the refuse matter of the arts which they exercise, become

Water in its simplest state is a combination of oxygen and hydrogen in definite proportions. When freshly obtained by the contrivances of the chemist, it is insipid and unfit for alimentary purposes; but on exposure to the air, it quickly imbibes an additional portion of oxygen, which it holds in solution, thereby acquiring a more grateful flavor, and a character in the highest degree congenial to the animal economy. In this second state, then, it constitutes the natural standard of pure potable water; every decline from which is indicated by a proportionate increase in specific gravity, evidencing the presence of extraneous matter. Now as water possesses great solvent powers, it readily becomes impregnated with foreign ingredients. The pure element, distilled in the great laboratory of nature, and stored up in the clouds and vapors of the higher regions of the air, descending thence in the form of rain, carries down with it the gases and the finer particles of solid bodies suspended in the atmosphere. The fallen rain, flowing along the surface of the earth and sinking through its interstices, parts with some of these adventitious matters, to enrich the soil and speed the work of vegetation; in exchange for them it again takes up others, such as animal and vegetable remains, and earthy, alkaline, and metallic salts. Thus freighted, and often depositing and renewing its freight, it pursues its subterraneous course, until it again finds vent at some point where the stratum over which it trickles crops out at the earth's surface. The lower that stratum, the purer in general is the water issuing from the spring. The water of Artesian wells, being derived from a great depth below the surface, is preeminent for purity and softness.

The hardness of water is owing to the presence of earthy and alkaline salts. A great portion of the water used in London labors under this grave defect. The consequences are, great waste and enhanced cost in washing and culinary processes, and a long catalogue of bodily sufferings entailed on the drinkers of the impure beverage. To illustrate by contrast the pernicious effects of repeated calcareous drenches, we need only point to the restorative qualities of the Malvern waters. Long before Priessnitz and hydropathy were heard of,

sources of grievous discomfort, vitiating the soil, those celebrated springs were resorted to for their the water, and the air. A wise economy will curative powers, especially in diseases of the dithen seek to arrest this deteriorating process, and gestive organs, the kidneys, &c., such as the to recover and preserve for the dwellers in the hard water of London tends to produce. Now city the primitive bounties of nature. To be in the Malvern waters are not of the mineral class; they cure, not by means of any medicinal ingre- | same identical dose of agaric wine has been known dients contained in them, but simply by virtue of to make five Tartar tipplers happy one after the

their own exceeding purity. Their specific gravity is only 1.002, showing them to be all but devoid of foreign admixture. There lies beneath London, quite accessible and ready to overflow for our use, an inexhaustible lake of water as pure as that of Malvern; but we are forbidden to touch it. The sick Londoner, craving for nature's pure cordial draught, must gulp down his lime-drugged potion, in reverence for the monopoly of the water companies.

other. It is not speculating too minutely to conjecture that in London the same particles of animal sordes or of morbid poison may pass unaltered through the bodies of several human beings successively.

The grievances we have here set forth are no new ones. They have been for many years the subject of loud and general remonstrance. Flesh and blood can endure them no longer. There is nothing to hinder their prompt and entire removal, except the resistance of the water companies on the one hand, and on the other the absence of a power able and willing to enforce the reasonable desire of the community. To do that is the proper office of the government. If par hazard we possess a government which is not altogether a sham, it will seriously take up this subject at the commencement of next session; only a government can bring together the needful information on the legal hindrances that obstruct the supply of sweet and wholesome water for London and the other towns-only a government has power to grapple with those obstructions by a sweeping vindication

But there are worse impurities in our daily drink than those of which we have yet spoken. We are paying the companies collectively 340,000l. per annum for the privilege of cooking our food, sweetening our persons, and washing down our meals, with a more or less concentrated solution of native guano. Excepting the parts of London supplied by the New River, the metropolis derives its supply of water chiefly from the Thames, just as in the reign of Henry the Third, when the limpid river still pursued "its silver winding way," where now we see a great fetid ditch, seething with the putrescent sordes of more than two millions of human beings, and incessantly of public health against private monopoly and local

churned by the paddles of steamers rushing about
in every direction to make the infusion more slab
and homogeneous. The tyranny of the water
companies entails on this metropolis some of the
horrors of a state of siege, literally compelling its
inhabitants to quaff

The stale of horses, and the gilded pool
That beasts would cough at;

of the common sewers.

with other nameless abominations, the outpourings There are public pumps in London, but, for the sake of consistency we suppose, many of these are so situated as to receive the drainings of graveyards. Elsewhere, wells and cisterns have been constructed in such

a manner as to have their contents mingled with the overflowings of the adjacent cesspools. The frightful mortality by cholera in Albion Terrace, Wandsworth, has been distinctly traced to that very cause. It is also worthy of especial note, that the localities which have been most desolated by cholera, are those which are supplied by the companies that procure their water from the Thames below Vauxhall Bridge.

In Goldsmith's Citizen of the World there is an account of certain Tartar tipplings, that bear no remote analogy to our London ways of using water. From a choice species of mushroom or agaric the Tartars extract a wine too costly to be within the means of any but the rich; the poorer sort, being forced to content themselves with the generous juice at second-hand, assemble round the place where the revels are held; and we pray our

readers to surmise the sort of transformation it is made to undergo before it reaches their lips. Dr. Pereira, if we remember rightly, states, in his commentaries on the Materia Medica, that the

corruption.

What hast thou to do with Peace?

2 Kings, ix. 18.

CHILDHOOD! thy wild and frolic hour,
Long as the butterfly's bright race,
Or the gum-cystus' dazzling flower,
As short-lived, and as full of grace;
Does it the calmer good contain ?
Glad art thou joyous, free from pain-

Will it from future care release?

But, what hast thou to do with peace?

Maiden of throbbing heart-whose breast
Hardly for what 't is yearning knows,
Yet, like the polyp, without rest,
Its trembling filaments out-throws,
Oft to be wounded-shrinking oft,
Wearied, but not from search will cease-
Tears check with pain thy rapture soft-

And what hast thou to do with peace?

Manhood, thine eye is still elate,
The weapons in thy hands are strong;
Thought sits within thy brow sedate,
And busy cares thy bosom throng.
Success hath sped thee; thou hast fame-
Bays that might serve victorious Greece;
Tumultuous joys thou hast, and name-
But what hast thou to do with peace?

Thou sire, of venerable age,

White-haired; for counsel rightly sought; With sons to take thy heritage,

And well-filled chests, for which thou 'st wrought;
Long have been here thy wanderings,

Thy grandchildren sit on thy knees;
Thou 'rt troubled about many things-
And what hast thou to do with peace?

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