DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.6272#0064
62 VOYAGE UP THE NILE.
dos, of Memphis, nought remains. Thebes was then an un-
settled plain. The superstructures of Rameses the Great, and
Osiren at Abydos, at Aboosimboul, at Thebes, built upon these,
still give an idea of the glory of Egypt throughout the valley
of the Nile. A pyramid of Cheops or his contemporaries, a
granite sanctuary * of Ositarsen, or a tomb cut in his time,t and
such solitary records as the tablet of Abydos, alone attest their
existence or their history. Like Babylon, like Babel, like the
localities of young earth, their sites are the ruins of their em-
pires, and we look at them alone through the dim glass of
their successors of thirty centuries ago—to whom they were
yet, by ages and siecles, an ancient race.
While at Abydos I could not but rehearse the ages that
had passed in Egypt's earlier time over that spot. The
ancient This, it alone of all Egypt, save Memphis, stood as the
locality of the first founders of Egypt. We do not conceive it
necessary to go to Wady Haifa with Miss Martineau, and look
over into Dongola to see this. We can contemplate from this,
as a point de depart, the dynasties of Egypt. Here before the
Augustine age of Rameses, and his father Osiren, (who built
these kingly halls.) lived the earlier dynasties, who were as
much anterior, says Bunsen, to Rameses or Sesostris, as
Augustus was to our era. The excavations of Messrs. Salt
and Bankes have thrown true light upon the history of
Egypt; the tablet of Abydos contained the name of Sesos-
tris as its last name, and is the grand regulating touchstone—
the Doomsday Book of Egyptian Chronology. I ran over in
my mind the history of this age before Abraham came into
Egypt; of those who built here before the building of the
pyramids, and who lived here at This, upon whose foundations
* Karnac. t Beni Hassan.
dos, of Memphis, nought remains. Thebes was then an un-
settled plain. The superstructures of Rameses the Great, and
Osiren at Abydos, at Aboosimboul, at Thebes, built upon these,
still give an idea of the glory of Egypt throughout the valley
of the Nile. A pyramid of Cheops or his contemporaries, a
granite sanctuary * of Ositarsen, or a tomb cut in his time,t and
such solitary records as the tablet of Abydos, alone attest their
existence or their history. Like Babylon, like Babel, like the
localities of young earth, their sites are the ruins of their em-
pires, and we look at them alone through the dim glass of
their successors of thirty centuries ago—to whom they were
yet, by ages and siecles, an ancient race.
While at Abydos I could not but rehearse the ages that
had passed in Egypt's earlier time over that spot. The
ancient This, it alone of all Egypt, save Memphis, stood as the
locality of the first founders of Egypt. We do not conceive it
necessary to go to Wady Haifa with Miss Martineau, and look
over into Dongola to see this. We can contemplate from this,
as a point de depart, the dynasties of Egypt. Here before the
Augustine age of Rameses, and his father Osiren, (who built
these kingly halls.) lived the earlier dynasties, who were as
much anterior, says Bunsen, to Rameses or Sesostris, as
Augustus was to our era. The excavations of Messrs. Salt
and Bankes have thrown true light upon the history of
Egypt; the tablet of Abydos contained the name of Sesos-
tris as its last name, and is the grand regulating touchstone—
the Doomsday Book of Egyptian Chronology. I ran over in
my mind the history of this age before Abraham came into
Egypt; of those who built here before the building of the
pyramids, and who lived here at This, upon whose foundations
* Karnac. t Beni Hassan.