A pilgrimage to the temples and tombs of Egypt, Nubia, and ...

232 DAKKEH.
wild Desert, without being- encumbered with any
of those filthy Arab accessories that generally
degrade the ruins of Egypt. In the pronaos are
traces of the early Christians having established
themselves there, for upon the cornice are ill-
executed paintings, now half obliterated, of some
of the saints of the Greek Church. According
to Champollion's reading of the hieroglyphic le-
gends at Dakkeh, the oldest part of the temple
was constructed and sculptured under Eugamenes,
the most celebrated of the Ethiopian kings of
Egypt ; it was continued by the Greek Evergetes
and the two succeeding Ptolemies ; and the Ro-
man Emperor Augustus was the last sovereign
who added to the embellishments of the interior,
which he, however, never terminated. Two his-
torical facts were also obtained by the same
learned hieroglyphist at Dakkeh. The first is,
that Nubia ceased to belong to Egypt from the
epoch of the fall of the 26th Dynasty dethroned
by Cambyses, at which period it passed under
the yoke of the Ethiopians, and remained subject
to them, until the conquest of Ptolemy Evergetes
reunited it once more to Egypt. The other is,
that the Caesars, the Ptolemies, and even the
Egyptian kings of the Ethiopian dynasty, were
not the creators of temples, but only reconstructed