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Show ANTIQUITIES IN EGYPT. t 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 monument in order to make sugar more cheaply. A gentleman who had been resident at ?? ten year 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 Monfettish of that date, to spare it, promising that if he would only give him time he would purchase if for a large sum of money. The Egyptian official, however, desirous of proving his zeal in the cause of Western civilization, and his incorruptibility, was inexorable, and the statue was dashed to pieces then and there, and pounded into the foundations of the sugar factory, 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 enlighted 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 ?? they are blasting within a few feet of the tablets on which the figures of Rameses and ?? Savak are delineated, and the ?? temple I had visited is evidently doomed.-Blackgood's Magazine. |