OCR Text |
Show 400 TTIE MONOGENIS'rS AND objects, in and around this sanctuaey of Scrapie, were tho reward of eight months' fatigue: when, as usual in Ottoman lands, local intrigues and international jealousies arrested tho works for a season; until the prompt intcl'fercn o of tho Pr neh Oovcmmcnt, with a gmnt of 30,000 francs for expenses, cnabl d tho umlauutcd explorer to rcsnmc his activo day-labors .in Feb. 1852. His noctnrnuJ researches wore n vor abandon d however; and his gallant dc!iauco as well of .£~tiling blo +s as of assassination had been crowned, on th night of tho 12th Nov. 1851, by cntmnco into a subterranean city of death,- the vast sepulchral caves of more than G4 generations of Apises, covering a pel'iocl of above 15 centuries, were Hightly trod by allic foot: that is to say, more than lGOO years since tho last Gaulish legionary had stat·cd at Apis dead, or that in Al xnndria, about the tim s of t. Mark, thoro had be n proclaimed tho advent of Apis living: -sw~v s'lr'•px.wev'11v, "tho lifo which comes;" narrate tho ecclesiastical historians, l~uUuus (obiit A. D. 408), Sozomen (obiit 450), and Socrates (flow·. 440); the last of whom, acquainted with a book which, according to St. J oromo, Sophronius had composed cone ruing tho destruction of the Alexandrian crapcum, about A. D. 391, relates that-" The Christians, who regard the cro s as a sign of tho salutary passion of Christ, thought this f!ign [the am:c ansata, hieroglyphic anlclt, f--" lifo cternal"-found in that temple of Serapis] was the one which belongs to them; the gentiles said, that it was something common to Clnist and to Serapis" 272-i. e. "IIaPI-JieSilU (Osit·is-Api ) great God who resides in Amentlti, tlte lord living jo1·eve1· ;" as S rap is is addressed in hundreds of inscriptions now at Paris. Those researches were vi."orously pushed for about four years ~long ~he Memphite necropolis, resulting, as will be soon presently, 111 au unmcnse ace ssion of antiquities, from tho earliest Pharaonic to ~he latest Roman times-a period of some 4000 years. Throuo-h them, the ago of th.e colossal sphinx of Goczeh has boeu carried back t.o tho primeval IVth dynasty; and, for chronology, a collection of funereal tablc~s .(about G50 saved out of some 1200 found), now in tho Louvre, g1vmg the geu alogios of individuals (one I saw goeE:J back, fathers and sons, ab ut 19 generations), often with tho dntef'l of kings' reigus, year, month and day, of every epoch, will enable archroology to fill a thousand gals in the time-measurement of old 2'1 2 LE'rRONNE, La Oroi:r; An86e tfgypticnne (M6rn. do I' Acad. dos Insorip. 2d part)" tirago il. pnrt," Paris, 184.6; pp. 24-2(): citing toxtunlly, Uufmus II, c. 2a and 20- Sozomon, Ili8t .. ec~le&. VII, 15, p. 725 B-and Soorntos, V, 17, p. 276, A. B. Con f. also, DN POTTBit, Ilt8totre du 0/iri&tiaTti&me. TilE POLYGENISTS. Eo·ypt. Tho last catalogue of tho Lonvrc museum 273 enumerates but few of these un •ounte<l treasures. Science mnst wait patiently fot· their ·o-ordination by their discov •rot', when Fran ·c publishoi:l his folio Monuments. Meanwhile, as De aulcy says-" Tho names of a dozen new Pharaohs have been found; and tho 400 principal stoles that arc now deposited in tho Louvl'e, arc like 400 pages of a book 'written 3000 y ars ago, which reveal to us a multitude of d tails, heretofore unknown, about tho life and the religion of ancient Egypt. Furthermore, art itself has to put in her claims for a share in tlJO rich booty of M. Mariette; and I limit myself to citing, ~moug o~hor monuments, an admirable statue of a s£ttintJ Scribe, datwg ccrtatnly 4000 years before tho Christian em, and which is a ahef-d' ceuvre of the plast.i · art." This Sc'·ibe is fac-simile-ed in our fronti8piccc, with other oontcm-porancons associates from tho same tomb (Vth dynasty) in plates II to VHI of this present volume. They arc d1LC to tho compla1sanco of my friends MM. Dcv6ria and Salzmann (author o~ thos~ unsurpassahlc pltotog1·aplts of Palestine), who, w~Lh.the sanctlon of M~.pe Rono·6 and Mariette kindly brought thctr mstrumcnts to rcv1v1fy, at th 0 c J~ouvre, tlto sr:ccimcns first ofl:ct· J. to tho American public in this work. M. Pulszky's practised eye has already as igned them a proper place in tho hiE:Jtory of iconographic art (Chapter li, pp. 109-116, ante). But Mat·icttc muf!t sp ak for himsclf.274 "I ostirnato," says the explorer, "that the diggings at the Serapen m of Memphis have led to tho discovct·y of about 7000 monu-ments. "But all those monnments arc not relative to tho same object, that is to say to t11e worship of tho God adored in the Serapeum. ~u~lt in an cropolis more ancient than itself, tho Scrap urn bc~d wtthm its enclosure some oltl tombs which tho piety of Egypt1ans had respected. N eal'ly all its walls wore, besides, formcJ. of i:l~onc borrowed from edifices already demolished. * * * Tbc clea~·mg out of the erapeum has, therefore, really had for result tho dts overy of the 7000 monuments alroafly montionocl. 13ut the monography of Scl'a.pis docs not count upon more than about. 3000 ;-a v?r·y.respcctablc cipher, if one l'O ollocts that fc;v q~cs~wns of anttqlllty. h.avc over reached us und t' the escort of a smnlar number of or1gmal documents. * * * It is not, then, a treatise upon Serapis that must be required fl'om tho littl ssay of which I am tracing tho lines. If :ns Notice Sommai1·e (supra, noto 222). . " . m "ltonsoignomonts sur los G4 A pi~ trouv(is dans los sootorram~ du S6rnp6um -11ullelm A1'cMulotJI:quc de t'Atltenawm Ji'rwl9ais, Pu.ris, !\by-Nov. 181i5; A.rtlCios I lo V. |