a block of red granite, twenty-two feet long, is now in the Egyptian
Museum in the Louvre. There has been much speculation among the learned,
concerning the signification of these figures. Winckelmann observes that
they have the head of a female, and the body of a male, which has led to
the conjecture that they are intended as emblems of the generative
powers of nature, which the old mythologies are accustomed to indicate
by the mystical union of the two sexes in one individual; they were
doubtless of a sacred character, as they guarded the entrance of
temples, and often formed long avenues leading up to them.




THE LABYRINTH OF EGYPT


A labyrinth, with the ancients, was a building containing a great number
of chambers and galleries, running into one another in such a manner as
to make it very difficult to find the way through the edifice. The most
famous was the Egyptian labyrinth, situated in Central Egypt, above Lake
Moeris, not far from Crocodilopolis, in the country now called _Fejoom_.
Herodotus, who visited and examined this edifice with great attention,
affirms that it far surpassed everything he had conceived of it. It is
very uncertain when, by whom, and for what purpose it was built, though
in all probability it was for a royal sepulchre. The building, half
above and half below the ground, was one of the finest in the world, and
is said to have contained 3,000 apartments. The arrangements of the work
and the distribution of the parts were remarkable. It was divided into
sixteen principal regions, each containing a number of spacious
buildings, which taken together, might be defined an assemblage of