The Epicurean Author:Thomas Moore Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: NOTES. Page io.—For the importance attached to dreams by the ancients, see Jortin , Remarks on Ecclesiastical History, vol. i. p. 90. Page 12.—" The Pillar... more » of Pillars"—more properly, perhaps, "the column of the pillars." v. Abdallatif, Relation de I'Egypte, and the notes of M. de Sacy. The great portico round this column (formerly designated Pompey's, but now known to have been erected in honour of Dioclesian), was still standing, M. de Sacy says, in the time of Saladin. vid. Lord Va- lentia's Travels. Ib.—Ammianus thus speaks of the state of Alexandria in his time, which was, 1 believe, as late as the end of the fourth century : — " Ne nunc quidem in eadeni urbe Doctrin variae silent, non apud nos exaruit Musica nee Harmonia conticuit." Lib. 22. Page 14.—From the character of the features of the Sphinx, and n passage in Herodotus, describing the Egyptians as ptetyxfitt xai ot/xoTfixic, Volney, Bruce, and a few others, have concluded that the ancient inhabitants of Egypt were negroes. But this opinion is contradicted by a host of authorities. See Castera's notes upon Browne's Travels, for the result of Blumenbach's dissection of a variety of mammies. Denon, speaking of the character of the heads represented in the ancient sculpture and paint' ing of Egypt, says, "Celle des femmes ressemble encore a la figure des jolies femmes d'aujourd'hui : de la rondeUr, de la volupté, le nez petit, les yeux longs, peu ouverts," etc., etc. He could judge, too, he says, from the female mummies, "que leurs cheveux etaient longs et lisses, que le caractere de la tete de la plupart tenait du beau style."—" Je rap- portai," he adds, "une tete de vieille femme qui etait aussi belle que celles de Michel Ange, et leur ressemblait beaucoup." In a Description ge'ne'rale de Thebes by Messrs....« less