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GRANITE WORKS OF THE ANCIENTS.

a\0W many acts of the great mundane drama
had been played betore the secular histo-
rian commenced his vocation is an in-
teresting but insolvable question. The
first scene, apparently, that challenged his
attention was not such as is usually conceived by our
modern school of antiquaries and ethnologists, but the
exhibition of a multitudinous, industrious, and highly
civilized community, divided into castes, and swayed by a
monarch whose magnificence and power have passed into a
proverb, and whose well organized government, and
numerous palaces and temples, in brick and stone, be-
tokened a long-established as well as prosperous rule.
The Pharoah of Egypt bursts upon the astonished gaze
of the student of early history, much in the same manner
as the royal priest of Salem manifests himself to the
Father of the faithful; or as Athéne, fully eqnipped,
springs from the head of Zeus—suddenly and unex-
pectedly—a commanding figure, perfect at every point,
and the archetype of oriental dignity and despotism.
Whether this particular phase of civilization was first
developed in the valley of the Nile, or was brought
thither from the East, is a disputable matter: for our
part, we incline to the opinion that Central Asia was not
only the cradle of humanity, but also the nursery of
science and art. At all events, the extraordinary vestiges
of antiquity in Egypt favour this supposition ; for there
it has been observed, long ago, that although the sculp-
tures and paintings in the tombs near the pyramids are
inferior to those of the best age, and although progress
is perceptible in different times, yet there is no really
rude or archaic style in the country; there are no ex-
amples of a primitive state, or early attempts in art,
such as are found in other lands; and the masonry of the
oldest monuments that remain—the pyramids of Ghizeh
—vies with that of any subsequent age, particularly in
their exquisitely wrought granite.

Whence the obviously enlightened Egyptian colonist
came, and in what school he acquired the art by which he
has immortalized himself, are, as already intimated, un-
fathomable mysteries. The existence of stone works in
many other parts of the world—in the Western as well
as in the Eastern hemisphere—exhibiting the same stupen-
dous labour and manifold skill in their construction and
embellishment, and not a few of them bearing the same
indubitable tokens of antiquity, as those scattered along
the banks of the Nile, clearly evinces that a civilized
condition must have been the common lot of mankind
long, long anterior to what is now conventionally termed
«the dawn of history,” or that era which is only partially
illuminated by the embers, so to speak, of a perishing,
and the coruscations of a contemporary, literature.

With respect to these astonishing evidences of Man’s
ingenuity and patience in the infancy of the world, two
circumstances are pre-eminently noteworthy. Firstly,
the vast majority of them are found, not as might be
very naturally expected, in those cold and temperate
regions where muscular exertion is necessary to sustain
the vital principle itself; but, on the contrary, they are
almost exclusively confined to tropical and semi-tropical
countries, where the human frame is subjected to the de-
pressing influences of a hot sun and deleterious exhala-
tions. Whence it would appear, that our primitive

GRANITE WORKS OF THE ANCIENTS.

ancestors had not as yet extended their conquests of
territory very much beyond the zone in which, according
to Biblical history and local tradition, the Almighty had
originally placed them. And secondly, whilst testifying
to the fact of their thorough acquaintance with all the
rules or laws of mechanics, the elaborately decorated and
sculptured works that characterized the temples more
especially reveal the fact that the most agreeable arts of
life, no less than the most useful, were equally well
known to them. Hencethe ingenuous confession of the
Abbé de Goguet, one of the most distinguished savans
in pre-revolutionary France: “In general,” he writes,
“J must take notice that, in the course of my researches,
I have all along observed with astonishment that the
merely pleasing arts have been as ancient in their origin
as those of the most indispensable necessity. Jubal, the
inventor of musical instruments, was brother to Tubal
Cain, the inventor of metallurgy.”

The largest existing monolith-temple in Egypt,—i. e.
atemple hewed out of a single block of granite—is that
of Tel-el-mai, on the Delta. It is 21ft. 9in. high; 13ft.
broad, and 11ft. 7in. deep. Large as this structure is, it
was exceeded by that of Amasis, which was also on the
Delta, and whicn Herodotus states required three years
to transport, with the aid of 2000 labourers, from Ele-
phantine to Sais, a distance ordinarily of twenty days’
Nilotic navigation. - According to the same venerable
authority, a third and still larger monolith-temple was
the glory of Latona, a city which stood on the western
branch ofthe Nile, and distant about twenty miles from its
mouth. “The most wonderful thing” (relates the father
of profane history) “that was actually to be seen about
this temple'was a chapel in the enclosure made of a
single stone, the length and height of which was the
same, each wall being forty cubits square (sixty feet), and
the whole a single block! Another block of stone formed
the roof, and projected at the eaves to the extent of four
cubits.” According to these admeasurements, supposing
the walls to have been only six feet thick, and the mate-
rial granite, as in all other monoliths, this monument
would weigh 7000 tons, being 76,032 cubic feet, without
the cornice, which was placed on the roof. This cap-
stone, although comparatively of inconsiderable weight—
2400 tons, if six feet be taken for its thickness—displays
a wonderful example of the union of skill and power in
its elevation through the air to the altitude of more than
sixty feet. If any doubt exists respecting the ability of
the ancients to transport and uplift such enormous masses
of stone as these, it is set at rest by M. Jomard, the cele-
brated Egyptologist, who gives a sketch, in his work on
Egypt, published by the French Government, of a huge
block of granite situated almost a quarter of mile from
the modern town of Syene, where it was abandoned for
some unknown reason, whilst on its way from the quarry.
It bears numerous traces of instruments in the work on
its surface, as well as evidences of its having been in-
tended for a colossal statue. M. Jomard’s dimensious
are—the largest 22 métres and %, and for the body and
back 6% métres, or about 72, 21, and 21 English feet,
which, at 13 cubic feet per ton, yields nearly 2500 tons!
This block of granite is probably the largest in existence
of which there is indisputable evidence of its having been
moved by sheer manual force. |

Granite forms the basis of the whole peninsula of
India; and here—one of the chief centres of primeval |

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