G REECE points to little more than a broken Parthenon as a memorial of her greatness; and Rome has preserved as the gift of her forgotten builders, a few shattered columns of the temple erected by Vespasian or a fragmentary colonnade of that which was dedicated to Saturn. But in Egypt, the temples are almost beyond numbering, while the inscriptions upon their walls and columns have preserved a written history contemporaneous with the age of their builders, most of whom had been forgotten long before the first stone was laid upon the Palatine hill, or the first year of the earliest Olympiad had passed. Sometimes, in a mountain forest, we see a tree that has outgrown and outlived its neighbors, and we wonder by what law of growth and preservation it has outlasted the fallen monsters which lie decaying at its roots. So the Egyptian temples seem to stand, perpetual monuments of an otherwise long perished past. The centuries have neither increased nor diminished their girth. Time has wrought but little change in their formation. They have only been deformed by the A wide and inexhaustible field, therefore, is offered by the Nile temples, to the historian, to the student of art and architecture, and to the camera enthusiast. The work of investigation must continue with courage and persistence until the Egypt Exploration Fund and its co-workers have revealed all the apartments of the Great Pyramid, and have turned over to the light the inscribed Copyright, 1888, by Charles Scribner's Sons. All rights reserved. |