Sonnini de Manoncourt, Charles Nicolas Sigisbert: Travels in upper and lower Egypt (Band 1) (London, 1807)

and lower egypt. 357

a man of such importance, I gave him payment
for his seal a little above its value.

In the market-place there is a long black stone
loaded with hieroglyphics. A man of Aboukir
perceiving that I considered every fragment of an-
tiquity with attention, and that I sought to disco-
ver them, came to offer me a statue which he said
was very beautiful, but partly buried. I sent one
of my attendants with this man, who could not
find his statue again. However, that he might
not altogether lose his time, and the profits he
hoped to receive, he set himself to removing the
earth, and in a moment he discovered a very fine
marble monument loaded with hieroglyphics ; he
came immediately to inform us of it; we went to
the place, and I saw a little pyramid in perfect
preservation of the most beautiful black marble,
and covered along each side of its base with a
fillet of hieroglyphics equally well preserved. I
bought it of a man to whom it belonged as little
as it did to me, and I gave it in charge to the Jew
drogman, to send it to me at Rossetta by the first
germe which departed from Aboukir. We may
form an estimate of the riches of this mine of anti-
quities, covered only by a slight bed of earth and
rubbish, since a man, in less than half an hour,
and without any implement but his hands, with

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