Their monuments prove, however, that they practiced the same mechanic arts, and used the same variety of tools, as the moderns. They were adepts at the finest work in every species of handicraft. We have here ample proof that the ancient Egyptians were a highly ingenious, artistic, tasteful, and industrious race.
CITIES AND HISTORIC MONUMENTS
The land of Egypt, teeming with population, abounded in cities and towns. Of these the greatest were Thebes, in Upper Egypt, and Memphis, in Middle Egypt, whose site was near the modern Cairo.
Abu-Simbel (ä´bōō-sim´bel) on the Nile, in Lower Nubia is the site of two very remarkable rockcut temples, among the most perfect and noble specimens of Egyptian architecture. Here there is no exterior and constructed part; the rock out of which they have been excavated rises too near the river. Still the temples have their façade, as richly decorated and as monumental in its character as those of the most sumptuous edifices of Thebes.
The colossal statues here, instead of being isolated monoliths, are a part of the façade itself, hewn out of the rock, though still forming part of it. The façade of the smaller temple, that of Hathor, is eighty-eight feet long and thirty-nine feet high. It has six colossal figures, about thirty-two feet high, of which four represent Rameses, and the other two his wife, Nefert-Ari. The façade of the great temple is larger, being one hundred and twenty-six feet long and ninety-three feet high.
Most striking are the four colossal figures of Rameses, two to the right, two to the left of the door. These are the largest figures of Egyptian sculpture, being sixty-six feet high. Everywhere are pictures like those at Luxor and Karnak, representing the battles and triumphs of Rameses.
Abydos (a-bī´dos), next to Thebes the most important city in the ancient kingdom of Upper Egypt. Here was found, 1817, in a corridor of the temple of Seti I. a very important tablet giving a succession of sixty-five kings beginning with Menes, covering a period of about 2,200 years. A similar tablet containing eighteen names, found in the temple of Rameses in 1818, was removed by the French consul-general, sent to Paris, and finally purchased for the British Museum.
Alexandria, the third capital of Egypt, was founded by Alexander the Great in the autumn of the year 332 B. C. It was situated originally on the low tract of land which separates the lake Marcotis from the Mediterranean, about fourteen miles west of the Canopic mouth of the Nile. Before the city, in the Mediterranean, lay an island, upon which stood the famous [350] lighthouse, the Pharos, built in the time of Ptolemy I. in the third century B. C, and said to have been four hundred feet high. The island was connected with the mainland by a mole, thus forming the two harbors.
The most magnificent quarter of the city, called the Brucheion, contained the palaces of the Ptolemies, the Museum, for centuries the focus of the intellectual life of the world, and the famous library; the mausoleum of Alexander the Great and of the Ptolemies, the temple of Poseidon, and the great theater.
To the south was the beautiful gymnasium. The Serapeum, or temple of Serapis, stood in the Egyptian quarter.