Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 2.djvu/47

The Palace -D some of the conditions imposed upon the Egyptian architect when he had to meet civil wants. Some of our readers may have expected to find, in this chapter, a description of a more famous monument, of that Labyrinth of which Herodotus, Diodorus, and Strabo wrote in such enthusiastic terms.^ But we are bv no means sure that the ruins in the Fayoum are those of the Labyrinth. These ruins, which were first discovered and described by Jomard and Caristie,- and afterwards in greater detail by Lepsius,^ are upon the western slope of the Libyan chain, about four miles and a half east-by-south from Medinet-el- Fayoum, at a point which must have been on the borders of Lake Moeris, if the position of that lake as defined by Linant de Belle- fonds be accepted. "* Mariette did not admit that the ruins in question were those of the vast building which was counted among the seven wonders of the world, " I know," he once said to us, " where the Labyrinth is : it is under the crops of the Fayoum. I shall dig it up some day if Heaven gives me a lonof enouofh life." However this may be, the ruins are at present In such a state of confusion that every traveller who visits the place comes away disappointed. ** If," says Ebers, " we climb the pyramid of powdery grey bricks — once however coated with polished granite — which, as Strabo tells us, stood at one extremity of the Labyrinth, we shall see that the immense palace in which the chiefs of the Egyptian nomes assembled at certain dates to meet the king was shaped like a horse shoe. But that is all that can be seen. The middle of the buildinof and the whole of the left wine are entirely destroyed, while the confused mass of ruined halls and chambers on the right — which the natives of El-Howara think to be the bazaar of some vanished city — are composed of wretched blocks of dry grey mud. The granite walls of a few chambers and the fragments of a few Inscribed columns form the only remains of any Importance. ' From these we learn that the structure dates from the reign of Amenemhat III., of the twelfth dynasty." ^ The plan and description of the building discovered by Lepslus ' Herodotus, ii. 148; Diodorus Siculus, i. 64; Strabo, xvii. 37. - Description de VAgypte, vol. iv. p. 478. ^ Denkmceler, vol. i. plates 46-48. Briefe aus ^Egypten, pp. 65-74. ^ See a remarkable paper on this question contributed by Mr. F. Cope Whitehouse to the Rei'tie Arckeologique (ox June, 1882. — Ed. ^ Ebers, .E.gypten, p. 174. VOL. IL E