they had picked up, when they found I was looking for antiquities; but all they had to offer was of Roman date, with the exception of some singular specimens of glass mosaic, something like the pattern of a cashmere. shawl, which I have never seen anything like elsewhere, and which is not only extremely beautiful, but displayed a very high degree of The old woman from whom I purchased it thought herself well paid with a silver piastre worth twopence.

art.

About four miles to the westward of Rhoda is the site of the once important city of Hermopolis Magna, the capital of the Hermopolitan Nome; and the agricultural railway which intersects the Daira Sanieh sugar-estates in all directions runs close past it. The Moufettishes have a very convenient method of superintending the work in the more distant part of the lands by means of small singlehorse tram-carriages. In a vehicle of this description we took a drive to the mounds that mark the position of the ancient city. Here we were met by the local superintendent with donkeys, and scrambled over the débris and tumuli, which reminded me very

much of those of Arsinoë in the Fayoum. Like those of Antinoë, they had been searched in all directions for blocks of stone with which to construct the sugar-factories. In one place I saw twelve porphyry columns erect that had escaped the sacrilege, but the massive stonework of an old Egyptian temple had not been so fortunate. Of this edifice, which must have been on a grand scale, only two plinths remained, the diameter of which was twelve feet, and the height three feet. They were covered with hieroglyphics and the ovals of Philip Aridæus, the titular successor of Alexander the Great, so that it dated from the commencement of the Ptolemaic period; but the rest of this temple, we were told, formed part of the foundations of the sugar-factory. I saw one mass of granite, covered with hieroglyphics, in the streets of Rhoda, evidently waiting till it was wanted for building purposes. The historian of future ages, grubbing amongst the iron boilers, shafts, and wheels which are characteristic of the age in which we live, will be puzzled to account for the presence of these immense blocks traced with the records of a civilisation four thousand years older, and will

either come to the conclusion that the ancient Egyptians used steam-engines, or that hieroglyphics were the ornaments with which we covered our sugar-factories. It is heart-breaking to think how much injury has been done to the antiquities of Egypt within the last ten years by the reckless destruction of its monuments in order to make sugar more cheaply. A gentleman who had been resident at Minich ten years ago, informed me that he had seen a beautiful naked figure of Antinous, carved in white marble, brought over from the ruins of the city, and condemned to be pounded into fragments in order to form part of the foundations. It was such an exquisite piece of sculpture that he almost went on his knees to the Moufettish of that date to spare it, promising that if he would only give him time he would purchase it for a large sum of money. The Egyptian official, however, desirous of proving his zeal in the cause of Western civilisation and his incorruptibility, was inexorable; and the statue was dashed to pieces then and there, and pounded into the foundations of the sugarfactory, as an evidence of his comprehension

of the utilitarian spirit of the age, and his sympathies with the advanced ideas of the late Khedive. At the same time, a stone inscribed with three languages, which might have proved of immense historical value, was broken up by this enlightened official, who also found sarcophagi very useful for building purposes the workmen engaged in making the excavations ruthlessly blasting the tombs. covered with hieroglyphics, and flinging the mummies into the Nile after appropriating whatever they found of value in the coffins. Nor has this work altogether stopped at Surarieh they are blasting within a few feet of the tablets on which the figures of Rameses and the god Savak are delineated, and the little temple I had visited is evidently doomed. Tombs and temples offer greater facilities for blasting than the smooth surface of the rock, which quarrymen are not slow to discover— to say nothing of the hope of finding treasure. The great majority of the sugar-factories on the west side of the river have thus been constructed from the monuments of the past; and during the last ten years more of the ancient Egyptian sculptures have been destroyed under

the influence of the mechanical genius of the nineteenth century, and the pressure of money-making, than during the ten preceding centuries, when it was left to the tender mercies of a more barbarous age. Monsieur Maspero, the able and energetic successor of the late Marietta Pasha, is, however, using his utmost efforts to put a stop to the work of destruction. Prior to this time it has chiefly been in the interests of the Mohammedan religion that ancient temples have been demolished, and the mosques are abundantly furnished with the columns and other fragments of a bygone architecture. Thus at Ashmoneyn there was a most picturesque old ruined mosque with an Arabic inscription on its wall, which dated back to the first century of the Hegira, in which I counted no fewer than thirty-one marble columns with Corinthian capitals, two of which near the pulpit were beautifully carved and fluted. While we were drinking coffee at the house of the Sheikh el Beled, waiting for any antiquities that the villagers might produce, a man came staggering up with a colossal head of a Roman emperor upon his shoulders, which he flung down at our feet, and then placed it on its