sculpture in all is incomparably more labored and higher finished than
any I had seen in the temples; and I stood in astonishment at the high
perfection of the art, and its singular destiny to be devoted to places
of such silence and obscurity. In working these galleries, beds of a
very fine calcareous clay have occasionally been crossed, and here the
lines of the hieroglyphics have been cut with a firmness of touch and a
precision, of which marble offers but few examples. The figures have
elegance and correctness of contour, of which I never thought Egyptian
sculpture susceptible. Here, too, I could judge of the style of this
people in subjects which had neither hieroglyphic, nor historical, nor
scientific; for there were representations of small scenes taken from
nature, in which the stiff profile outlines, so common with Egyptian
artists, were exchanged for supple and natural attitudes; groups of
persons were given in perspective, and cut in deeper relief than I
should have supposed anything but metal could have been worked."

The Sepulchres of the Kings of Thebes are mentioned by Diodorus Siculus
as wonderful works, and such as could never be exceeded by anything
afterwards executed in this kind. He says that forty-seven of them were
mentioned in their history; that only seventeen of them remained to the
time of Ptolemy Lagus; adding that most of them were destroyed in his
time. Strabo says, that above the Memnonium, the precise locality of
Denon's description, were the sepulchres of the kings of Thebes, in
grottos cut out of the rock, being about forty in number, wonderfully
executed and worthy to be seen. In these, he says, were obelisks with
inscriptions on them, setting forth the riches, power, and empire of
these kings, as far as Scythia, Bactria, India, and Ionia, their great
revenues, and their immense armies, consisting of one million of men.

In Egypt, the honors paid to the dead partook of the nature of a