This mountain range is near 300 feet high and rises here so steep that there seems to be difficulty in ascending it. A grotto is generally understood as somewhat in the nature of a cave, and which may serve as a subterranean home for the living instead of being the resting place of the dead. The only place called a grotto of which ancient Thebes affords an example is situated at about 975 feet northeast of the palace of Osymandyas, not quite in the mountain range, but rather in a hill before it. Its front faces the Nile and before it is an open area hewn out of the rock, from which the explorer passes into a court likewise uncovered. All the rest of this is subterraneous. Within are found saloons and chambers of various dimensions upon three stories. A staircase of fifty-six steps leads from the top to the bottom. The walls are everywhere covered with sculpture, which must be ranked with the best and most highly finished, notwithstanding the light of day could never have penetrated to them. In the pits of this grotto, as well as in those of the catacombs, some remains of mummies are certainly to be found; but the arrangement of the whole building renders it extremely improbable that it should have been intended merely as a place of burial. Some Egyptian nobles seem to have had within their own dwellings an apartment intended for their own burial. places, as is supposed to have been the case in the palace of Osymandyas. This grotto might also have served for the initiation of the kings into the mysteries. Situated in the way to the catacombs and royal sepulchres it would be difficult to find a place better adapted to conduce to a solemn and contemplative frame of mind, and so it is thought that it might have been used as a cool retreat from the summer heat.

cara.

The so-called catacombs are not peculiar to Thebes, every Egyptian city having had its own; those of Memphis are found at SacBut as the royal capital of Egypt did not exhibit a greater excellence in her temples and palaces above ground than she did in those subterranean caverns and tombs for her people and kings, in no other part of Egypt are they found so numerous nor executed with an equal degree of skill and attention. They bear witness as well as the architectural wonders to the fact that the ancient Thebaid was the country where civilization, such as they had in Egypt, was carried to the highest perfection.

Beginning in the Libyan mountain chain where it approaches the nearest to Medinet Abou and Gornou the catacombs extend about four or five miles in length. The steep ridge, near three hundred

feet high, affords ample room for those burial places, which rise in tiers one above the other. The lowest, in which the rich sought to find their long resting places, are the most spacious and beautiful; the higher we ascend the poorer they become. The more roomy and splendid have an open vestibule before the entrance, but the greater number have merely doors. The lower passages to which they lead run sometimes in a horizontal direction, at other times downwards, sometimes straight, at other times winding. They lead at one time into saloons and apartments of various characters, and at others intc pits of which the explorer must be on his guard. Many are connected together and form a labyrinth from which it is often difficult for one to find one's way out. In the large caverns are found saloons twelve or fifteen feet high, supported by rows of pillars; and behind them is a smaller apartment, with a sort of platform up four steps. In the background is a human figure in a sitting posture, hewn in high relief and frequently accompanied by two females. Upon the side of the wall are galleries, in which are the mummy pits from nine to twelve feet wide and from forty to fifty deep. There has nowhere been discovered any trace of steps descending into them. Some of the catacombs are more regularly formed than others. The earth is strewed over with mummies and fragments of mummies, which have fallen or been turned out of their cases; so that the explorer has, as it were, to wade through them; and among them are found amulets, idols and other relics of antiquity. These catacombs are now the habitation of the bats and the Arabs, equally to be feared by the explorer; the former, because their wings may extinguish the light; the latter because of their thievish propensities. Another danger equally great menaces the industrious explorers, arising from the inflammability of the mummies. It is only with an artificial light of some kind that these gloomy abodes can be visited, and a spark might in a moment ignite a brand which would doom the explorer to a cruel death.

The Egyptians who are said to have been certainly ignorant of the principles of the arch are found to have often adopted this form in their vaults. The ceilings at the entrances and in the front corridors are usually arched; this is, as we shall presently see, particularly striking in the case of the royal sepulchres.

The catacombs are without pillars and generally bear but slight resemblance to the buildings above ground. The walls, however, are not less richly ornamented. These decorations are composed

partly of painted reliefs and partly of mere paintings in fresco. The representations on the walls are always pictures, bounded by straight lines, in which the reliefs are finished with great perfection. In many of them complete figures are only two inches high and the hieroglyphics which accompany them only four lines. The subjects consist of various affairs of common life; sometimes what we would call shop business, such as the weighing of goods; a feast at which appears the owner of the house, his wife and guests, with a richly furnished table; a dance; a hunting scene; the labors of the husbandman, the vintage; the navigation of the Nile; musical instruments, the harp, the lute, flutes; wild and domestic animals, etc. The ceilings have no ornaments in sculpture, but are merely painted in fresco; they are considered the more worthy of attention as the Egyptian artist here abandoned himself entirely to his fancy, as the moderns do in arabesque work. All this splendid workmanship must have been executed with an artificial light and could only have been seen again by the same means.

Those sepulchral chambers, besides the various pictorial representations referred to, contain, also, some remains of ancient literature In the mummies have been found many rolls of papyrus, and especially one great roll, which measured twenty-eight feet in length. This relic contains upwards of 30,000 characters, in 515 columns, and is written partly in hieroglyphic and partly in alphabetic characters. This interesting relic has, therefore, offered an interesting field for the study of such enterprising geniuses, as were interested in Egyptian antiquities. Here as well as in Babylon have bricks with impressed inscriptions been found; the characters on them, however, are not letters but hieroglyphics, which seem to have been stamped with a wooden block.

The situation and disposition of the royal sepulchres are markedly different from those of the tombs of the people. Those are located in the interior of the Libyan Mountains, and in visiting them from Gornou the explorer has to go a distance of about three miles through a narrow mountain pass to the entrance of the valley containing them. The defile which leads to them had originally no outlet, and it is found to have been opened from the background by manual labor. A way hewn in the rocks conducts to a narrow pass, which forms the entrance to the valley containing these royal sepulchres. The valley here expands into two branches, one towards southeast and the other southwest. It must have been before the erection of these sepulchres altogether inaccessible.

There appears here no sign of vegetation; steep and rugged rocks enclose it on every side; all around is the image of death. The heat softened by no cooling breeze and intensified by the sun's scorching rays from the rocks and sand becomes so intense that no human being could endure it, were it not for the shelter offered by the catacombs. Two of the companions of Gen. Desaix were here suffocated.

In Strabo's time there were about forty of those tombs; but the entrances to many of them are now blocked up by fragments of rock, which have fallen down; and thus their contents may be preserved uninjured to future ages. Of those that have been opened the general appearance is similar, although they are not exactly alike; in their size and embellishments they differ. The depth varies from fifty to 360 feet. Some are entirely covered with ornaments and excellently finished; upon others the work had been scarcely begun.

Each of these sepulchral caverns forms a suit of corridors, chambers and apartments, in which there is generally one principal saloon. A kind of mound or elevation is usually found in this, upon which stands the sarcophagus, containing the remains of the king, or intended for that. Out of twelve tombs that had been opened six still possessed their sarcophagi or some portion of them; from others they had wholly disappeared. That found in the largest sepulchre, called by the French the harp-tomb, from two harpers having been represented therein, is twelve feet long and formed of red granite; upon being struck with a hammer it sounds like a bell. The principal apartment in this room is vaulted and supported by eight pillars. The explorer has to push through ten doors before he reaches the sarcophagus; but however securely the monarch who here rests may have imagined he had provided for the quiet repose of his remains, they have not escaped the human lust for plunder.

Several mummies are found in the chamber next the principal door, which has caused investigators to conclude that besides the king those who had been about his person while living again became so associated with him after death.

The sculpture and painting, which everywhere here covers the walls, owing to the nature of the stone, could not have been wrought, as in the palaces, upon the rock itself; but the walls are plastered over with a kind of mortar, upon which the sculpture and paintings are executed. Of the subjects of the embellishments in

this tomb many are religious offerings and sacrifices; and among the latter human beings are thought to appear. Those who appear to be sacrificed are all negroes; but it is not certain that their deaths were not merely in the way of the execution of criminals or prisoners, which in the case of the latter was but too common ! But, besides religious rites there are found here, just where such would have been least expected to occur, representations of battles both on land and on water; the slaying of captives, etc. These scenes of blood and turmoil being portrayed in the stillness and sanctity of the tomb, prove to the antiquarian explorer that these sepulchres were intended for none but kings. There is, moreover, so much represented here pertaining to every-day life as cannot fail to give us some idea of the luxury of the nation and of the high degree of perfection to which the art had attained among them. Belzoni with much labor opened one of the tombs, which had remained closed till his time and discovered what far surpassed his expectations. What had been executed perhaps three thousand years ago appeared as fresh and uninjured as though it were just turned out of the hands of the artist. Corridor after corridor, chamber after chamber were found; and when, at last, the principal apartment was opened to the explorer he discovered that wonderful piece of art, nothing like which had been before found, namely, a sarcophagus of the purest oriental alabaster, nine feet nine inches in length and five feet seven inches broad. It is semi-transparent and covered both within and without with figures, which seem to relate to funeral rites. It is now in the British Museum. But even the few historical reliefs which have been copied from the walls contain much information both of a physiological and a historical nature. On these we see three different races of men represented, the black, the tawny and the white, who are distinguished by their color and their features. The scene represented is rather of a peaceful character than warlike. The King appears in regal grandeur; the ambassadors of different nations approach him to render him homage and tribute. In their national dress and in a dignified manner they appear as performing a stately ceremony, not as captives. The plates here are Belzoni's and in them is shown. what the aid of the artist can avail in rendering these pictures understandable, a proper notion of them not being able to be conveyed by verbal description alone.

In the first we see the king on his throne with the regalia about him, the sceptre in his hand, a golden chain about his neck and a