Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art | Page 4

related that it shed tears, and gave out oracular responses
in seven verses, and that these sounds were heard till the fourth century
after Christ. These phenomena, attested by many ancient and modern
writers, are variously accounted for by the learned, as priestcraft,
peculiar construction, escape of rarified air, &c. This statue is in
excellent preservation. The head is of rose-colored granite, and the rest
of a kind of black stone. Two other colossal statues, about fifty feet
high, are seated on the plain.

HELIOPOLIS.
The name of Heliopolis, or City of the Sun, was given by the Greeks to
the Egyptian City of On. It was situated a little to the north of Memphis,
was one of the largest cities of Egypt during the reign of the Pharaohs,
and so adorned with statues as to be esteemed one of the first sacred
cities in the kingdom. The temple dedicated to Re, was a magnificent
building, having in front an avenue of sphynxes, celebrated in history,
and adorned with several obelisks, raised by Sethosis Rameses, B.C.
1900. By means of lakes and canals, the town, though built on an
artificial eminence, communicated with the Nile, and during the
flourishing ages of the Egyptian monarchy, the priests and scholars
acquired and taught the elements of learning within the precincts of its
temples. At the time of Strabo who visited this town about A. D. 45, the
apartments were still shown in which, four centuries before, Eudoxus
and Plato had labored to learn the philosophy of Egypt. Here Joseph
and Mary are said to have rested with our Saviour. A miserable village,
called Metarea, now stands on the site of this once magnificent city.
Near the village is the Pillar of On, a famous obelisk, supposed to be
the oldest monument of the kind existing. Its height is 67½ feet, and its
breadth at the base 6 feet. It is one single shaft of reddish granite
(Sienite), and hieroglyphical characters are rudely sculptured upon it.

MEMPHIS.
The very situation of this famous ancient city of Egypt had long been a

subject of learned dispute, till it was accurately ascertained by the
French expedition to Egypt. Numerous heaps of rubbish, of blocks of
granite covered with hieroglyphics and sculptures, of colossal
fragments, scattered over a space three or four leagues in circumference,
marks its site, a few miles south of Metarea or Heliopolis, at a village
called Moniet-Rahinet. According to Herodotus, the foundation of
Memphis was ascribed to Menes, the first king of Egypt. It was a large,
rich, and splendid city, and the second capital of Egypt. Among its
buildings were several magnificent temples, as those of Phtha, Osiris,
Serapis, etc.; its palaces were also remarkable. In Strabo's time, it was
next to Alexandria in size and population. Edrisi, who visited Memphis
in the 12th century, thus describes its remains then existing:
"Notwithstanding the vast extent of this city, the remote period at
which it was built, the attempts made by various nations to destroy it
and to obliterate every trace of it, by removing the materials of which it
was constructed, combined with the decay of 4,000 years, there are yet
in it works so wonderful as to confound the reflecting, and such as the
most eloquent could not adequately describe." Among the works
specified by him, are a monolithic temple of granite, thirteen and a half
feet high, twelve long, and seven broad, entirely covered, within and
without, with inscriptions; and colossal statues of great beauty, one of
which was forty-five feet high, carved out of a single block of red
granite. These ruins then extended about nine miles in every direction.

LAKE MOERIS.
This famous lake, according to Herodotus, with whose account
Diodorus Siculus and Mela agree, was entirely an artificial excavation,
made by king Moeris, to carry off the overflowing waters of the Nile,
and reserve them for the purposes of irrigation. It was, in the time of
Herodotus, 3,600 stadia or 450 miles in circumference, and 300 feet
deep, with innumerable canals and reservoirs. Denon, Belzoni, and
other modern travelers, describe it at the present time as a natural basin,
thirty or forty miles long, and six broad. The works, therefore, which
Herodotus attributes to King Moeris, must have been the mounds, dams,
canals, and sluices which rendered it subservient to the purposes of

irrigation. These, also, would give it the appearance of being entirely
the product of human industry.

THE COLOSSAL SPHINX.
The Egyptian Sphinx is represented by a human head on the body of a
lion; it is always in a recumbent position with the fore paws stretched
forward, and a head dress resembling an old-fashioned wig. The
features are like those of the ancient Egyptians, as represented on their
monuments. The colossal