DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4372#0224
208
that the buildings they arc attached to, were repaired during
their respective reigns.
I have already offered some reasons on the subject of other
temples why I am inclined to a different opinion; and arguing d
priori, it would seem very unlikely that Egypt should so long
•continue to flourish and even to increase, as she did under the Pto-
lemies, in population, wealth and commerce, (many of these sove-
reigns at the same time being described as great promoters of the
arts, and as having adopted at least the exterior forms of worship
practised by their subjects,) without any additions being made
to her public buildings, without any new temples, during a lapse
of three centuries. No argument, I think, can be drawn from
the resemblance which these buildings, of supposed modern con-
struction, bear to those of an earlier date, in their general form,
the distribution of the apartments, their proportion, sculp-
tures and the like; as these coincidences would naturally follow
from the protection and countenance given to the religion of
Egypt by the Ptolemies, from the general prejudice throughout
the then civilized world in favour of these superstitions, from the
bigoted attachment always felt by the borderers of the Nile for
their antient institutions, and from the difficulty, and indeed
uselessncss, of endeavouring to assimilate the manners, customs,
and religious ceremonies of one people with those of another,
which had always been held in a kind of contempt:—so different
indeed was the free course of human prejudice when left to take
its own direction unfettered by the interference of government,
that as soon as Egypt and Greece cultivated under the Roman do-
minion a mutual intercourse of interests and opinions, those of the
former obtained a decided preference. In Asia Minor, in Greece
and Italy, and especially in Rome, temples were built in honour
of
that the buildings they arc attached to, were repaired during
their respective reigns.
I have already offered some reasons on the subject of other
temples why I am inclined to a different opinion; and arguing d
priori, it would seem very unlikely that Egypt should so long
•continue to flourish and even to increase, as she did under the Pto-
lemies, in population, wealth and commerce, (many of these sove-
reigns at the same time being described as great promoters of the
arts, and as having adopted at least the exterior forms of worship
practised by their subjects,) without any additions being made
to her public buildings, without any new temples, during a lapse
of three centuries. No argument, I think, can be drawn from
the resemblance which these buildings, of supposed modern con-
struction, bear to those of an earlier date, in their general form,
the distribution of the apartments, their proportion, sculp-
tures and the like; as these coincidences would naturally follow
from the protection and countenance given to the religion of
Egypt by the Ptolemies, from the general prejudice throughout
the then civilized world in favour of these superstitions, from the
bigoted attachment always felt by the borderers of the Nile for
their antient institutions, and from the difficulty, and indeed
uselessncss, of endeavouring to assimilate the manners, customs,
and religious ceremonies of one people with those of another,
which had always been held in a kind of contempt:—so different
indeed was the free course of human prejudice when left to take
its own direction unfettered by the interference of government,
that as soon as Egypt and Greece cultivated under the Roman do-
minion a mutual intercourse of interests and opinions, those of the
former obtained a decided preference. In Asia Minor, in Greece
and Italy, and especially in Rome, temples were built in honour
of