C ATACOM BS, are subterraneous galleries and cham bers appropriated for the reception of the dead.
Most nations emerging from barbarity have testified a pious anxiety respecting the disposal of their dead, and have erected monuments to perpetuate their remem brance. Some, instead of at once committing bodies to the earth, where they might return to their pristine dust, have deposited them in natural CaVCs, or formed artificial excavations below the surface, where they might be preserved entire from decay. Such was the practice of the Egyptians, which led to the construction of cata combs ; and more recently, the Guanches, or aborigines of the Canary islands, adopted an easier expedient of depositing their dead in caves, where three or four hun dred bodies tiny he seen collected together.
The most ancient catacombs with which we are ac luainted, are thos• of the Theban icings ; as they can be traced during a period of 3000 or 4000 years. In the age of Diodorus, long after the city of Thebes itself was destroyed, it appears that 17 of 47, the original number, still remained ; and Strabo also speaks of about 40 sepul chres of the Theban kings.
The Egyptians, believing- that if the human body could be kept entire, it would be revisited by the soul, con trived, by means of embalming, to preserve it from decay. Then it was deposited in catacombs excavated in the earth, to await the return of the animating princi ple. Hence resulted those wonderfully extensive and intricate subterraneous galleries and chambers which have remained to the present day.
Excavations are always found in the vicinity of the most extensive cities ; and they are also seen in remote and sequestered places. But those of Thebes, from the reputed splendour of the city, have been viewed with peculiar interest during many succeeding ages.
The whole chain of mountains in the neighbourhood of Thebes is penetrated for almost three-fourths of their height, by an incredible number of openings, leading to an immense labyrinth of catacombs. Those of the kings, of which the same number can probably still be recog nised as described by Diodorus, occupy a deep ravine, flanked by the bed of a torrent, in the centre of the mountain Lybicus. They are between six and seven thousand paces from the banks of the river Nile, and were gained by an artificial passage.
Proceeding along the valley, the traveller unexpect edly discovers openings in the ground, with a gate-way in a simple square frame ; an ellipse bearing a beetle, or the figure of a man with a hawk's head, is seen in the upper part, and beyond its edge two figures kneel ing in the act of adoration. Each gateway in the valley is an introduction to a gallery, leading to the royal sepulchre. At the distance of forty paces within is another gateway, opening to a second gallery, as broad as the first, and 24 feet in length ; and to the right and left of these galleries are small chambers. A third gallery succeeds, communicating with a chamber 18 feet square, above the level of the other apartments ; from it is an entrance to a gallery, which, added to a subsequent one, is 64 paces in length. At their ex tremity is a corridor of 16 paces, leading to a chamber eleven paces square, connected by a short gallery to another chamber of the same size. The royal sarco phagus is next seen, in a spacious saloon twenty feet square. But bey ond this is even another chamber, of still larger dimensions. Hence the intricacy of such subtcrrancous passages may be conceived, the total length of the excavation here spoken of being 225 paces. It is not to be understood, however, that all the catacombs of the kings are of the same dimensions, as equal opportunities have been wanting to ascertain the fact.
The whole sarcophagi have long ago been violated, and the bodies of the kings carried away or destroyed. Bnt their enormous size, and the rugged way through which they were necessarily conducted, must excite our admiration. One consists of a huge mass of granite, 16 feet long, six broad, and eight high. The lid is also a single block of stone, bearing the •lligy of a king. The sarcophagus has been worked in the place which it now occupies ; which would seen' to add to the difficulty, already incredible, of conveyance over the mountains, and along the passages below. But the ancient inhabi tants of that territory had always some stupendous work Niew, and which it would require ages of our compara tively feeble faculties to accomplish.