[30] Miss Edwards.
[31] Sir J. F. Herschel’s discourse; quoted in Long’s “Egyptians,” referring to an obelisk erected at Seringapatam.
[32] The word noub signifies gold.
[33] Murray’s Hand-book.
[34] The learned editor of “Murray’s Hand-book” observes, that in the Egyptian language the island was called Pilak or Ailak, the place of the frontier,—a word perverted by the Greeks into Philæ.
[35] Athanasius was Patriarch of Alexandria in 327 a.d.
[36] Typhon, the genius of evil, is the great ancestor of the too-frequent deadly enemy of our own day, typhus and typhoid fever. In the Egyptian language we meet with many words which are in common use amongst ourselves at the present time:—Chemistry is derived from Chem, or Shem; Alabastron, was a city of Egypt; the Oasis of Ammon produces ammonia; the topaz and the sapphire are named after Topazion and Saparine on the Red Sea; the smaragd, or emerald, is found in Mount Smaragdus; and natron and nitre in Mount Nitria, &c. So that the world and all its mysteries are but a chain of mutually related links.
[37] In the centre of the southern Egyptian gallery of the British Museum, “is placed the celebrated Rosetta stone; it is a tablet of black basalt, having three inscriptions, two of them in the Egyptian language, but in two different characters (hieroglyphic and enchorial); the third in Greek. The inscriptions are to the same purport in each, being a decree of the priesthood at Memphis in honour of Ptolemy Epiphanes, about the year b.c. 196. This stone has furnished the key to the interpretation of the Egyptian characters.” There is likewise, in the same gallery, “a cast of a similar trilingual tablet found at San, being a decree of the priests at Canopus in honour of Ptolemy Euergetes I. and Berenice, b.c. 238.” (Birch.) San, it will be remembered, is “the field of Zoan of the Bible.”
[38] Sixteen of Bonomi’s obelisks have a less altitude than forty-three feet, including two belonging to Rameses II.; two of Psammeticus; the Alnwick obelisk of Amenophis II., so ably described by himself; and the two obelisks of black basalt in the British Museum.
[39] Mr. W. R. Cooper, in his excellent Monograph on “Egyptian Obelisks,” just published, makes note of the following curious and interesting quotation from “Letters from Egypt, by Lepsius:”—“A few days ago we found a small obelisk erect, in its original position, in a tomb, near the pyramids, of the commencement of the seventh dynasty (Memphite, 3500-3400 b.c.). It is only a few feet high, but in good preservation, and with the name of the occupant of the tomb inscribed upon it. This form of monument, which is first conspicuous in the new monarchy, is thus removed several dynasties further back, in the old monarchy, even than the obelisk of Heliopolis.” This obelisk is remarkable, as having apparently a funereal character.