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

264 ROOM OMBOS.
and mutilate them. The action of fire must
have been put into requisition to split the im-
mense blocks of which the temple is composed.
Besides the violence of ruthless destroyers, Koom
Ombos has suffered much from another cause;
for the wall of circumvallation which the ancient
Egyptians opposed to the incursions of the Desert
having been thrown down, the sand has gradually
drifted in upon it, until the once stately edifice is
now more than half buried beneath the smooth
yellow mounds that have accumulated on all
sides. Koom Ombos is a Ptolemaic monument,
and only counts two thousand years !
I need not
tell you, therefore, that it is classed among the
depreciated remains of Egyptian art, and by com-
petent judges is considered in the light of a
modern inferiority.
Our next halt w^as at Ghebel Silsilis, those
marvellous sandstone quarries which have fur-
nished materials for almost all of the monuments
of Upper Egypt. They lie for a considerable
distance along both sides of the river, which
is narrower here than in any other part, and
exhibit long galleries cut into the rock from
whence w^ere hewn the vast blocks wdth which
the Pharaohs, the Ptolemies, and the Caesars
successively constructed their temples and pa-