Abydos has been called the cradle of Egypt

but the seat of the first _settled monarchy appears to have been the great city of Memphis, — S. of modern Cairo, and said to have been founded by Menes, the _first historic king, about 4000 B. c. This city must have been one of the largest of the ancient world, and the ruins of an immense place remained as late as the 12th century A. D.; but owing to the inundations of the Nile nothing re- ‘mains of it at the present day but a few earth mounds and two colo al Statues, which stood in front of the great Temple of Ptah, and the Pyramids and innumerable tombs built on the uplands W. of the Nile, which formed the great cemetery of the city, and among which the famed Pyramids of Gizeh formed the chief. These are surrounded by whole streets of tcmbs. It is at ancient Thebes that an idea of the magnificence of ancient Egypt ean be obtained. The ruins of temoo and buildings there exceed those eft in the remainder of Egypt altogether, if we except the Pyramids, and are far more extensive than anything remaining either at Rome or ‘Athens. The site of the ancient city, being mostly above the level of the inundation, has ‘escaped the destruction that has fallen on other cities, Thebes dates from a high antiquity, and a few of the more ancient parts of its temples are from the time of the 11th dynasty, about 2500 B. ©.; but under Pharaohs of the 19th o.), Seti I, and Rameses IL, etc. the chief seat of gov- Eichendorf? ernment was transferred from Memphis to Thebes, and the city was embellished with the magnificent temples of which the ruins now remain, The great group of Karnac alone is nearly a mile long and one-third of a mile wide, and comprises a whole a emblage of temples connected together by avenues of sphinxes. These buildings are mostly far too complicated and elaborate to describe in the limits of a single paper. Moreover, they show in many instances a departure from the original and simple plan of the early temples dedicated to the gods; the monarchs of this period would seem to have been almost intoxicated by the grandeur of the empire and the extent of its foreign conquests and the cemples are covered with inscriptions of their own glorious doings, and though the credit of them is all ascribed to the gods, the prevailing sentiment seems their own glorification.