aroundworldortra00peebiala-1

306 AROUND THE WOELD.
only two hours and a half jfrom Cairo by carriage. They
tell me that in winter-time it is a very pleasant drive,
over a splendid road bordered with orange, lemon, acacia,
and olive trees. The gardens of ancient Heliopolis were
famous, as the historian knows, for their balm-of-Gilead balsams.
What think you, my countrymen, remains of this
sacerdotal, this university city of antiquity, where Moses
studied the " wisdom of the Egyptians," where Joseph's
father-in-law officiated as a priest in the temple, where Plato
the Grecian graduated, and where Herodotus, in his
travels, sought counsel from the "wise men of Egypt"?
Its colleges, its magnificent temples, are but isolated mounds
now ; and all that remains to determine the locality is a
beautiful granite obelisk. This, fixing the site of the Temple
of the Sun, is thought by some Egyptologists to have
been erected by the Pharaoh of Joseph's time, bearing the
name of Osirtasen I., founder of the twelfth dynasty.
When the geographer Strabo visited this grand old country,
Egyptian scholars pointed out the residences of Eudoxus
and Plato during the thirteen years they remained in Egypt
under the searching tuition of the priests of Heliopolis.
Though relentless time long since transformed Plato's Egyptian
palace to dust, it has not effaced the hieroglyphics from
Heliopolis's stately obelisk.
The obehsk in the Hippodrome at Constantinople, which
I visited several times while in Asiatic Turkey, is supposed
to be the work of the fourth Thotmes. Those in Rome,
brought from Egypt, bear inscriptions of various Pharaohs.
But, of all the obelisks, the largest and most beautiful is that
of Kamak, at Thebes, cut by Queen A-men-see, about 1760
B.C. It is a single towering shaft of the purest and most
exquisitely polished syenite, in height about ninety feet, and
in weight over four hundred tons.
In hieroglyphical symbol-writing, Heliopolis means " the
abode of the sun ; " and, as a celebrated seat of philosophy,
its hierophants and seers professed to enlighten the world