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The Egyptian antiquities in the British Museum
The Egyptian antiquities in the British Museum Author:George Long 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: dern, such information as will tend to give an interest to what the Museum contains, and to furnish more exact information to the general reader than he will fin... more »d in most popular books on Egypt. Another object has not been lost sight of altogether, to supply classical students with additional motives for a labo- -ious and voluntary study of those antient books, which unfortunately are in general only a compulsory and heartless task. If they were made intelligible, per haps the evil we complain of would be remedied. This volume is only a compilation (as all such volumes must be), in which every authority that was accessible and could be depended on, has been freely used. The books from which extracts are made, or the passages which furnished particular ideas, have been carefully referred to; but so much has been written on Egypt that it is not always easy to assign to the right person whatever share of merit may be his due. There are, however, several books on Egypt, which are so frequently quoted or referred to in these volumes that some more particular notice of them is justly due to the authors. The jEgyptiaca of Mr. Hamilton has been taken in preference to almost every other authority, as furnishing a most faithful and perspicuous description of those monuments of Egypt which he visited. Without disparaging other excellent travellers among our countrymen, we cannot refrain from expressing the superior degree of confidence which we feel when supported by Mr. Hamilton's authority. Belzoni's account of his operations in Egypt and above the cataracts, furnishes a most valuable supplement to previous descriptions. A manly and honest tone pervades the whole, which is calculated to secure the writer that credit' which he well deserved. But though Bel- zoni was an accurate obs...« less