DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.11638#0068
54 TRAVELS IN UPPER
whom piety wished to eternize even after their
annihilation. The humidity which the watering
necessary to fertility there diffused, the labours of
cultivation, are means of corruption and disturb-
ance, which the religious system of the Egyptians
made it a duty to avoid. The dry and barren moun-
tains with which the plains are enclosed, presented
a certainty of preservation and of repose, and it
was natural to deposit there the inanimate, but
carefully prepared remains of persons beloved or
venerated. The stone of this rock is soft, when it
is not separated from the mountains and exposed
to the air, which gives it a firmer consistency;
hence it was not very difficult to dig it out ; and
what was taken from these excavations afforded
sufficient materials for erecting habitations. It
may be farther observed, that it is in the neigh-
bourhood of great cities that the back of moun-
tains is hewn into such numerous openings. It is
then out of doubt that these are so many quarries
opened to serve as places of sepulture to the inha-
bitants of ancient Egypt, and that the beautiful
caverns of. the mountain of Siout. have been the
catacombs of the Lycopolitans.
At the foot of the mountain is an enclosure con-
secrated as the burial-place of the Mahometans. It
had been newly whitewashed, and its zig-zag con-
struction, in a sort of checker-work, rendered the
appearance of it picturesque and very pleasing.
I found
whom piety wished to eternize even after their
annihilation. The humidity which the watering
necessary to fertility there diffused, the labours of
cultivation, are means of corruption and disturb-
ance, which the religious system of the Egyptians
made it a duty to avoid. The dry and barren moun-
tains with which the plains are enclosed, presented
a certainty of preservation and of repose, and it
was natural to deposit there the inanimate, but
carefully prepared remains of persons beloved or
venerated. The stone of this rock is soft, when it
is not separated from the mountains and exposed
to the air, which gives it a firmer consistency;
hence it was not very difficult to dig it out ; and
what was taken from these excavations afforded
sufficient materials for erecting habitations. It
may be farther observed, that it is in the neigh-
bourhood of great cities that the back of moun-
tains is hewn into such numerous openings. It is
then out of doubt that these are so many quarries
opened to serve as places of sepulture to the inha-
bitants of ancient Egypt, and that the beautiful
caverns of. the mountain of Siout. have been the
catacombs of the Lycopolitans.
At the foot of the mountain is an enclosure con-
secrated as the burial-place of the Mahometans. It
had been newly whitewashed, and its zig-zag con-
struction, in a sort of checker-work, rendered the
appearance of it picturesque and very pleasing.
I found