Explore "Sketches" by Benjamin Disraeli on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
UPPER EGYPT is a river flowing through a desert; the banks on each side affording a narrow margin of extreme fertility. Rocks of granite and hills of sand form, at slight intervals, through a course of sev-earl hundred miles, a chain of valleys, reaching from the rapids of the Nile to the vicinity of Cairo. In one of these valleys, the broadest and the most picturesque, about half-way between the cataracts and the modern capital, we find the most ancient, the most considerable, and the most celebrated of architectural remains. For indeed no Greek, or Sicilian, or Latin city -- Athens, or Agrigentum, or Rome; nor the platforms of Persepolis, nor the columns of Palmyra, can vie for a moment in extent, variety, and sublime dimensions, with the ruins of ancient Thebes.
These remains may be classed, generally, in four considerable divisions: two of these great quarters of ruins being situated on each side of the river Nile -- Karnak and Luxor towards the Red Sea; the Memnonion and Medcenet Habu towards the great Libyan Desert. On this side, also, are the cemeteries of the great city -- the mummy-caves of Gornou, two miles in extent; above them, excavated in the mountains, are the tombs of the queens; and in the adjacent valley of Beban-el-Maluk, the famous tombs of the kings.