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

252 AUGUSTAN ERA OF EGYPTIAN ART.
but holy feet were allowed to press the soil, ren-
dered sacred to the Egyptians of old by contain-
ing the earthly part of their divinity Osiris. It
is the fashion to depreciate the monuments of
Philse by applying to them the term modern, which
in this part of the world signifies any construction
dating from the domination of the Greeks and
Romans. The Augustan era of art in Egypt was
the glorious eighteenth dynasty, which comprised
the great names of the three first Thotmes, (the
third of them being the Pharaoh of the Exodus,)
of Amenophon, of Osirei, of Rhamses Sesostris,
&;c. &;c.; and it was during the reign of the two
latter, that the fine arts attained their highest
degree of perfection; and the most sublime and
irreproachable of the Pharaonic monuments still
extant date from that period. The temples of
Philse can lay no claim to such high antiquity, or
such classical perfection ; for the oldest portions
of them now remaining are the ruins of a little
temple dedicated to Athor, on the southern ex-
tremity of the island, and a portal, both of them
constructed by the last of the native kings of
Egypt, Nectanebes, the unfortunate Pharaoh
who was conquered and dethroned by the last
Persian invasion. The latter of these remnants
of a better epoch, flanked by two wings, the work