contained 4000 baths and 400 theatres. It is now dwindled to a village, with nothing remarkable but the ruins of its ancient grandeur.—[Malcom's Bible Dictionary.]
Modern Alexandria is built of the ruins of the ancient city, and contains a population of 15,000.
The city of Abydos, or the Buried City, was so called by the Arabs, from its being beneath the surface of the ground. The traveller enters it by an excavation made for the especial purpose, assisted by his guide, and descending, finds himself within the ruins of a large city, with broad streets, temples of worship, and dwellings excavated in the solid rock. The extent of Abydos is supposed to be three or four miles; but it has never been thoroughly explored by travellers. The question has been started, whether this city was originally built above ground, and sunk by some great convulsion of nature, or built originally beneath the surface, as it appears at the present time. Mr. Buckingham thought it could hardly have been sunk, as the walls of the buildings retain their firmness and perpendicularity. He therefore thought that it was originally built where it now stands. Neither did he think it had been buried by a whirlwind from the desert, as some had supposed, because the soil which covered it was not of sand, but of clay. He thought it probable that it had been built as an appendage to the great Labyrinth, to assist in initiating the priests into the rites and mysteries of their calling, and furnishing them with the means of rehearsing, in an uninhabited city, the parts which they would be called upon to enact in public.
The ancient cities of Bubastis [or city of Isis,] and Heliopolis [or city of Osiris, or the Sun,] where the mythological rites of the Egyptians were performed, were remarkable for being seats of religious ceremonies. The resemblance between the mythology of Egypt and that of India were very striking. The festivals were very similar—particularly the illuminations, for which Bubastis was celebrated. This city, in the magnificence of its illuminations, surpassed all the other Egyptian cities. There was also an annual festival of lamps in Hindostan—when all classes sent forth on the Ganges their lamps of various kinds, according to their different stations and means, which were carried down into the
