Wilkinson, John Gardner: Topographie of Thebes, and general view of Egypt: being a short account of the principal objects worthy of notice in the valley of the Nile, to the second cataracte and Wadi Samneh, with the Fyoom, Oases and eastern desert, from Sooez to Bertenice (London, 1835)

66 TOPOGRAPHV OF THEBES. [Chap. I.

The sculptures on the west wall are a continuation
of the scene. The Egyptian princes and generals
conduct the " captive chiefs " into the presence of
the king. He is seated at the back of his car, and
the spirited horses are held by his attendants on
foot. Large heaps of hands * are placed before
him, which an officer counts one by one, as the
other notes down their number on a scroll; each
heap containing three thousand, and the total indi-
cating the returns of the enemy's slain. The num-
ber of captives, reckoned one thousand in each line,
is also mentioned in the hieroglyphics above, where
the name of the Rebo points out the nation against
whom this war was carried on. Their flowing
dresses, striped horizontally with blue or green
bands on a white ground, and their long hair and
aquiline nose give them the character of some
Eastern nation in the vicinity of Assyria and Persia,
as their name reminds us of the Rhibii of Ptolemy,
whom he places near the Caspian and the north
bank of the Oxus. But it is not my intention to enter
into a dissertation on this subject at present; I leave
these interesting wars for a future and more suitable
occasion. A long hieroglyphic inscription is placed
over f the king, and a still longer tablet, occupying
a great part of this wall, refers to the exploits of

* Another heap consists also of phalli, which are evidently
neither of Jews nor Colchians.

f M. Champollion gives a translation of this; but he does not
of course intend it to be a literal one.