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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1859 Excerpt:... bull's head, and was called Osiris-Apis or Serapis; while on the hill of Sakkara, in the same neighbourhood, he had some of the attributes of Pthah and was called Pthah-Sokar Osiris. The burial-places were in the west, on the edge of the desert, and chiefly in a plain between the hills, which is named the plain of mummies. Here he the embalmed remains of the citizens of Memphis among countless mummies of cats and ibises; but the kings and priestly nobles were buried on the hills, in pyramids built of brick or stone. The low Libyan hills, that separate the grass land from the glaring western sands, are fringed along their tops, as far as the eye can reach, with pyramids of all sizes, the burial-places of men who once owned the plain. The fields and gardens of the living, like life itself, are bounded by the tombs, and beyond lies the silent pathless desert. (26) Herodotus visited the quarries on the east of the Nile, from which much of the stone was dug for the pyra-Herodotus, mids, and then the three large pyramids themselves Ub. u. m. on the west of the Nile, ten miles from Memphis; and his guide, translating the hieroglyphics on the largest pyramid, told him that it cost in building sixteen hundred talents of silver, or two hundred and thirty thousand, pounds sterling. The brick pyramid of king Asychis, which Herodotus. Lib. ii. 136. says was even larger than either or the three which are still the wonder of the world, is not now standing. It was probably built with unburnt bricks, and may have in part crumbled to dust in the course of so many centuries. Nor can we trace with certainty the ruins of the vast sepulchre and palace which Herodotus calls the Labyrinth, and which he thought more wonderful than the pyramids them-, Lib. ii. 148. selves. It was s...