~^F- o y/'iT) MEMOIR OF THE EGYPT EXPLORATION FUND. I GOSHEN AND THE SHRINE OF SAFT EL HENNEH ( 1885 ). BV EDOUARD NAYILLE. $ WITH ELEVEN PLATES, INCLUDING MAPS AND PLANS. PUBLISHED BY ORDER OF THE COMMITTEE. t'LLIAM GEORGE’S SONS. Tv' Corner P;irk Street. BRISTOL. LIBRARIES & BOOKS BOUGHT. MESSRS. TRUBNER & CO., 57 & 59, LUDGATE HILL, E.C. _ i 3M 1887. ?uao CMjl ^ 'I THE SHRINE SAFT EL HEN NE H AND THE LAND OF GOSHEN ( 1885 ). Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015 https://archive.org/details/shrineofsaftelhe00navi_0 THE SHRINE OF SAFT EL HENNEH AND THE LAND OE GOSHEN (1885) BY EDOUARD NAVILLE. FIFTH MEMOIR OF THE EGYPT EXPLORATION FUND. PUBLISHED BY ORDER OF THE COMMITTEE. LONDON: MESSRS. TRUBNER & CO., 57 & 59, LUDGATE HILL, E.C. PREFACE. The present Memoir embodies the results of my exploratory campaign during the winter season of 1885. Of these results, I have already had the honour to present a brief viva voce report, in the course of a lecture delivered at the Royal Institution during the month of October in the same year. The Members of the Egypt Exploration Fund may probably ask how it is that they have not sooner received this work, and they may be justly surprised that a memoir so moderate in length should have been in preparation for nearly two years. I can only plead in reply the fact that I was under the necessity of first completing a very heavy task begun several years before, which task is now finished. The greater part of this Memoir is devoted to the interpretation of a monument which has largely contributed to determine the position of the Land of Goshen ; a subject especially within the domain of the Egypt Exploration Fund, in the service of which Society I have thrice had the honour to be engaged. Priceless objects of antiquity are daily disappearing in Egypt, and nowhere does the work of destruction go on so rapidly as in the Delta. While there is yet time — while still the kindly soil preserves some store of unrifled treasure — let us endeavour not only to rescue these invaluable relics, but to make use of them for the solution of those important geographical and historical problems which confront the Archaeologist at every step. Burned in the lime-kiln of the fellah, or broken up and sold piecemeal to the passing tourist, the inscriptions which contain the materials necessary to our studies will ere long be wanting. It may perhaps be said that there is not much in a name ; and I admit that the shrine of Saft el ILenneh presents fewer points of interest than the store-chambers and inscriptions of Pithom. I nevertheless venture to hope that this Memoir, which is the logical and historical sequel of the first, may receive some modest share of that favour with which “ Pithom” has been honoured. EDOUARD NAVILLE. Malagny, May , 1887. CONTENTS. PAGE Saft el Henneh . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 The Thirtieth Dynasty . . . . . . . . . . 3 The Monuments discovered . . . . . . . . . . 5 Phacusa, Goshen, Ramses . . . . . . . . . . 14 Khataaoah, Kantir . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Tell Rotab . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Appendix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 SAFT EL HENNEH. Towards the close of December, 1884, while exploring the sides of a canal which branches off at Zagazig and joins the canal of Ismailieh, I came to a large village called Saft el Henneh. The country all around is peculiarly fruitful. The luxuriant fields bear witness to the fertility of the soil ; while the villages, which are among the richest in Lower Egypt, are governed by sheikhs who generally are men of large fortunes. At the first glance, one sees that Saft el Henneh stands on the site of an ancient city of considerable extent. Close to the canal, a large space is covered with mounds of decayed bricks and broken pottery, indicating a Roman settlement, where the direction of the streets is still discernible. This space is bounded on the south side by the remains of a wall built of large, crude bricks, and about 36 feet in width. The area of the old city does not end there. Farther to the east, beyond a brackish pond, is a high mound of ancient date, now used as a cemetery. The whole village is constructed on the ruins of old houses, many of which are still to be seen on the south side. It is pro- bable that some years ago, the mounds covered a much larger space of ground than now ; but as in the case of all these old Egyptian cities, the mounds have been worked for sebalch , and thus have disappeared by degrees. Walking through the streets of the village, one sees, built into the walls of the houses, fragments of hard stone, diorite, porphyry, red or black granite. Sometimes much larger pieces are used for foundations. The mosque, which is now the school, is supported by Greek columns of grey marble, some with their capitals. Another large fragment serves for the threshold of what is called the old synagogue, where the traditional well of Moses is shown. Among this multitude of fragments I found only two that were inscribed. One, an angular thick slab of red granite, with sculptures on both sides ; now used as a corner-stone at the end of a street. This monument is of a very fine style, bearing the name of the first king of the thirtieth dynasty, Nebhthorheb, Nectanebo I. (pi. viii. ci and c*2). Another is the top of a tablet of black granite, bearing the name of Ptolemy Philadelplios (pi. viii. d) ; but it is unfortunately in a most deplorable state, being half sunk in a pond outside the village, where for years, if not for centuries, if has been used by the fellaheen women as a board on which to wash their linen. The most interesting place at Saft el Henneh is a declivity which, starting from the large brick wall, slopes down towards the fields. It is partly occupied by a garden and a field of henneh. When I went there first, I saw at a distance of about a hundred and twenty yards from the wall, a large hollow half full of water, in which lay several blocks of basalt, and a block of black granite inscribed with hiero- glyphs. I soon perceived that this block formed part of the monument to which must once have belonged the two large fragments deposited near the door of the Bulak Museum. These monuments have been studied by Prof. Brugscb, who read upon them the name of the nome of Arabia. The stone which still lay on the spot was a useful addition to the very imperfect knowledge we had of that important district; the more so as I saw in the inscription a geo- graphical name which does not occur in the Bulak fragments. It was therefore desirable to attempt excavations at Saft, but it could not be done before the spring, when the water would have sufficiently subsided. B SAFT EL HENXEH. 2 My first object in excavating at Saft was to recover as much as I could of the famous shrine of Saft of the time of Nectanebo II., the last of the Pharaohs, and thus to restore, at least in part, this important monument, known only from the fragments at Bulak. I began, there- fore, to work round the granite block. I soon found the walls of the temple (cf. pi. x.) which originally contained the monolith ; but beyond two more fragments of the naos, I discovered no inscribed stones in the temple itself, but only 142 basalt stones worked on one side, and prepared either for a wall or a pavement. I cleared the area of the temple down to the sand. The enclosure is made of brick walls from 15 to 18 feet thick. The building originally stood on the bank of a canal which followed nearly the same course as the present Abu-l-Munagge, and which certainly was the old Pelusiac branch. The old bed may be traced as far as Belbeis. Between the temple and the great city wall is a space about 120 yards wide, which, judging from the nature of the soil, must once have been covered with houses. I there made several soundings, and sank pits down to the natural soil, but without result. The wall itself is 36 feet wide, and the bricks are more than 15 inches long. There are also traces of a less massive wall in front of the temple, at right angles with the city wall, which very likely en- closed the temenos. Outside the temple, in the direction of the village, I found in a corn-field two fragments of a colossal statue of black granite. The buckle on the belt bears the cartouche of Rameses II. (pi. viii. a). I also purchased from a fellah in the village a fine broken statue of Nectanebo II., now in the British Museum. This certainly cannot be called a rich collec- tion of monuments ; but after I had worked there for a few days, I soon became convinced that Saft el Henneh had already been robbed of its choicest relics. It is a mine which has not only been worked, but thoroughly ransacked, and its most valuable monuments have either been scattered or destroyed. When the sheikh on whose land I was excavating became re- assured as to the object of my researches, he told me that some twenty years ago a great number of inscribed stones were unearthed on that spot ; but since that time they had dis- appeared, most of them having been used for building purposes. The great number of broken pieces which are built into the walls of the houses prove that the sheikh spoke the truth. It is possible that some of the dispersed monu- ments have found their way to the museums of Europe. There is no doubt, for instance, that a basalt ichneumon which was shown to me by the learned keeper of the Ambras Collection at Vienna, Ritter von Bergmann, comes from Saft el Henneh. It exactly resembles the ichneumon represented on pi. vi., and the inscription is nearly identical : (j ^ U | ° ^ \J\ Atum, the Ka of Heliopolis, who resides in the house of the sycamore. It is also likely that a fragment in the Louvre, on which Professor Brugsch has discovered a list of dekans, 1 came from the same place. The way in which the monuments of Saft have been destroyed is very well illustrated by what happened to the shrine. Twenty years ago, when digging for agricultural purposes, the fellaheen came across this splendid mono- lith, covered with sculptures inside and outside. A pacha who lives in the neighbourhood immediately ordered that it should be broken in pieces, thus acting in accordance with a super- stition which prevails throughout Egypt, namely, that the ancient monuments contain gold. The first thing to do, therefore, is to break them up, in order to arrive at the precious metal. Two of the fragments were carried by the pacha to his isbet (farm), where they remained until they were taken to the Museum of Bulak (pi. i. 1 Brngsch, Thes. laser, i. p. 179; Pierret, laser, da Louvre, p. 73. THE THIRTIETH DYNASTY. 3 and iii. B. a, b. b). Several others have been built into the bridges of Saft and Tahra, the sculptured surfaces being first erased. My first task was to collect all the fragments that I could find, and to put together as much as I could of this valuable monument. Besides the big block which I saw on the occasion of my first visit (s. a), I dug out three more at Saft (s. b, s. c, s. d). On the side of the canal near the isbet of Mustapha Pacha was an angular piece (m), with part of two outside faces and a little of the inside (pi. i., v., vi., vii.). Near that spot, with the help of tackles, I dragged another fragment out of the canal (o). I think there is yet another close by, but the canal was so deep that I could not reach it. This was all I could recover of that fine monument, of which I thus restored about one-half . 1 Judging from these facts it is evident that Saft el Henneh has been rich in precious objects of antiquity, and that irreparable losses have been caused by the vandalism of the inhabitants. THE THIRTIETH DYNASTY. Looking at the monuments of the twoNecta- nebos, it is impossible not to be struck by the beauty of the workmanship as well as by the richness of the material employed. Egyptian art undergoes a new resurrection more complete than under the twenty-sixth dynasty. There is more vigour in the style than at the time of the Psammetichi ; perhaps less delicacy than in the works of the Saite kings, but a decided tendency to revert to the stern beauty of the works of the great Pharaohs. The hiero- glyphs engraved on the tablet and shrine of Saft, and on the cornices of Horbeit, are cer- tainly among the most beautiful in Egypt. In 1 Since this was written, all the blocks have been broiurht to the Museum of Bulak, with the exceptiou of two, s.c. , which is still buried in the garden of the sheikh, and c., which fell back into the canal. The present Director of the Museum, M. Grebaut, had the blocks put together, and all that remains of the shrine may be seen now at the entrance of the Museum. (March, 1887.) B the proportions of the monuments there is also manifested an ambition to rival the colossal buildings of earlier dynasties. Thus the Nec- tanebos did not cut up the colossi of former kings, or engrave their names on monuments which they had not erected ; they forbore to follow the example of the kings of the twenty- first and twenty-second dynasties. They again worked the quarries of Aswan and Hamamat, and brought thence the enormous blocks which are found in several places in the Delta. For their models, they seem to have chosen the kings of the twelfth dynasty. It is to the art of the Amenemlias and the Usertesens that the art of the Nectanebos may best be compared. Nectanebo II. took for his coronation name the first oval of Usertesen I. For kings who spent the greater part of their lives in the Delta, it was natural that those ancestors who seemed worthiest of imitation, and who recalled to them the most glorious traditions, should be the kings of the twelfth dynasty, the builders of Tanis and of several cities on the Pelusiac branch of the Nile. From the Greek writers we derive much in- fonnation concerning the kings of the thirtieth dynasty. We perhaps know more about them than we know of any others of the Pharaohs. Judging', however, from the monuments which they erected, they must have been much more powerful than might be gathered from the narrative of Diodorus Siculus. He describes them as constantly engaged in resisting the invasions of the Persians ; and if one of them succeeded in holding his ground against the armies of the great king, the second of his suc- cessors was fated to lose his throne. This being the case, how could they find time and means to raise the great buildings of which there are so many ruins in the Delta? Certain it is, that in the wdiole course of my Delta explorations, the names of the two Nectanebos are among those which I found most frequently, as well as those of Rameses II. and Ptolemy Philadelphos. 2 4 SAFT EL HENNEH. I have mentioned and described elsewhere 1 the gilt pillar bearing the name of Nekhthorheb which I discovered at Pithom. I can adduce other instances in which T came across the name of this king. In a small village called Tawila, north of Tell el Kebir, the people told me that in one of the houses there was a stone block which was said to be inscribed. I dug in the soil at the place which was pointed out to me, and I soon found a large block of red granite, broken at both ends. It was 12 ft. 2 in. long, 3 ft. 3 in. wide, and 20 in. thick. It was originally twdce as thick, for on the narrow side there is a vertical inscription, and portions of the characters with the side line of a cartouche which belonged to another inscription running parallel to the first. The inscription in large hieroglyphs very deeply cut is the beginning of the name of Nekhthorheb (pi. ix. it.). This stone formed part of a pillar originally belonging to some large edifice. It had been sawn in two, and one of the halves had been brought there, I imagine, to make an oil-press. Two square holes had been carved in the stone for planting wooden posts, and between them there was a small furrow in the form of a quadrangle, with a gullet for the flowing out of the liquid. How came this block to a place where it is quite isolated, and where there are no traces of ruins ? I think it must have come from a tell called Tell el Ahmar, about four miles higher up than Tawila on the side of the same canal. I there saw an old settlement, and a capital of basalt. I will but mention Behbeit el Hagar , near Mansura, the colossal ruins of which have often been described. It was probably the birthplace of Nekhthorheb, who there founded a temple which was enlarged by Ptolemy Pliil- adelphos. There also the name of Rameses II. is found. His cartouche is inscribed on the base of a column close to the house of the sheikh el haled. Near the station of Abu Kebir, N.E. of Zagazig, is the locality called Horheit, generally considered as the site of the old Pharbsethus. I visited the extensive area covered with the ruins of the ancient city ; and in the village itself, in a small courtyard between two houses, I saw three enormous granite blocks, such as are seldom met with in Egypt. They are fragments of a ceiling ; one of them is sunk in the soil, making an acute angle with the ground ; and the part which is buried must evi- dently go down to a great depth, so as to support the enormous weight of that which is above the soil, and which is some 24 feet in leno-th. I should not wonder if the whole block were twice that length. We thus gain some idea of the proportions of the temple. Here also Nekhthorheb is the author of these gigantic monuments, and here again I saw the name of Rameses II. on a cornice built into aw r all. At Saft el Henneh, it’ we observe chrono- logical order, we find Rameses II., then the two Nectanebos, and then Ptolemy Philadelphos. It is not extraordinary that the kings of the thirtieth dynasty should have attached special importance to the eastern part of the Delta, and have multiplied great structures in that part of the country ; for I cannot help thinking that these Egyptian temples, surrounded by thick walls built sometimes of bricks and sometimes of granite, and communicating with the outside world through but one door, or two, were capable of being employed for purposes of defence, and of being turned to the same uses as the Temple of Jerusalem, or the fortified convents of the Middle Ages. A small garrison well provided with food could easily hold out for some time in an Egyptian temple, and undoubtedly it was the place in which the people of the city de- posited their valuables in times of war or insurrection. The Nectanebos were constantly exposed to invasions from the east. They had again and again to fight the armies of tbe Persians ; therefore they built these temples 1 “ The Store City of Pithom,” p. 12. THE MONUMENTS DISCOVERED. 5 which were primarily religious buildings, but which could also be converted into military forts, and thus help in the defence of the country. This double usefulness of the temple has, I believe, occasioned the ruin of many. It was not iconoclasts only who so thoroughly destroyed the temple of Tanis. Such a com- plete overthrow demands too much time and labour to be the work of a fanatical mob. It is far more probable that in some of the numerous wars which were waged in the Eastern Delta, whether under the Roman Empire or later, 1 this well-built stronghold was purposely destroyed, that it might not fall into the hands of an enemy. Further explorations in the Delta will pro- bably bring to light other monuments of the Thirtieth Dynasty, which, considering all the works still remaining, must certainly have been more powerful than would appear from the writings of the Greek authors. It is also pos- sible that the conquest of Egypt by the Per- sians was less easy and complete than as described in Diodorus. Several circumstances lead us to question the correctness of the Greek historian when he says 2 that Nectanebo, after his defeat, gave up Egypt as lost, gathered his treasures, and fled to Ethiopia. Probably lie was buried in Egypt. On the shrine of Saft there is unfortunately no date left. There are but a few doubtful signs (pi. iii. 4) which may be the remains of one. The contents of the in- scription seem, however, to point to a long reign, at the end of which Nectanebo may have become vassal or tributary of the great king. THE MONUMENTS DISCOVERED. I will describe the monuments of Saft in chronological order. The first which occurs is the colossal statue in black granite of Rameses 1 For instance, in the Bucolic war under M. Aurelius. Cf. Flinders Petrie, “Tanis,” i. p. 41. 2 Lib. xvi. 51. II. There were two fragments in a corn-field a short way in front of the temple near the village. One is a foot with part of the leg, the other is the waist with part of the apron (pi. viii. a). On the buckle of the girdle is engraved the cartouche of Rameses II. The buckle is 8 inches in length, which gives some idea of the size of the statue. Such a monument could only belong to a temple of some importance. We learn from these scanty remains that Rameses II. erected at Saft a building of large proportions. From the nineteenth dynasty we pass over to the thirtieth, and to its first prince Nekhthorlieb, to whom belongs the granite slab used as a corner-stone. It is part of a large stele, or of a wall inscribed on both sides with religious texts (pi. viii. u. l and c. 2 ). The sculptures were executed in several registers. The king is seen in the attitude of worship, with raised arms, and there are fragments of his two cartouches. On one side there is reference made to putting urn*- neferu , which is the usual name of the sacred boats. The style of this fragment, and espe- cially of the hieroglyphs of the large cartouche, is remarkably beautiful. Then follow the monuments of Nectanebo II., Kheperkara Neklitnebef. I begin with the broken statue which I purchased with great difficulty from a reluctant fellah in the village. It is now in the British Museum. It is all that remains of a standing statue ; head and feet have been broken off, perhaps intentionally. On the back of the pillar by which the statue is supported, is an inscription in two columns, the signs of which are placed face to face (pi. viii. b). On the right side, are the names and titles of the king; on the left, those of the deity to whom Nectanebo had dedicated his own statue. That deity Avas the god of Saft el Henneh, Sopt or Soptakhem. The attribute which the king assumes on his standard is p,, Thema (pi. i. 1, ii. 1, iv. 1), somebody, very likely a god, on the 6 SAFT EL HENNEH. which can only mean “ The Destroyer.” Horns the Destroyer, or simply “ The Destroyer ,” was a title adopted by other kings before Nectanebo; User- tesen II., for instance, when he appears before Sopt in a tablet of Wadi Gasus. 1 In a later age it was assumed by the Emperor Tiberius. Nec- tanebo II. calls himself Horthema, a warlike god, another form of the god Anhur, translated as Ares by the Greeks, and one of the divinities of the Sebennyte nome, the birthplace of the Nectanebos. Nekhthorheb put Anhur in his coronation name ; and Nectanebo II. put Horthema in Ins standard. Horthema is gene- rally represented bearing a lance, 2 as it is said in the inscription of pi i. 1. 4 ; but in the temple of Medinet Habu, Raineses III. takes that name at the moment when, armed with a mace, he smites his enemies. 3 The other titles of Nec- tanebo are only common formulas which are nearly identical for all the kings. It is said that he lores Sopt, the lord of the Hast, Har- malchis the great god, the lord of the mountain of Balch'u, the ‘prince, the king of the nine gods} By far the most important monument of Saft is the shrine of Nectanebo II., found quite fortuitously about twenty years ago. I have already related the misfortunes which befell this magnificent monolith, one of the largest of its kind. Its thickness is 6 feet 8|- inches, its width 6 feet; as for the height, it is not possible to determine it exactly, but it could not have been less than 7 feet 3 inches. The four faces were covered with inscriptions, as well as the inside and the ceiling. I have given (pi. i. and pi. iii.) a restoration of the monument, both front view and back view, with an indication of the way in which the remaining blocks fit into each other. It shows that the back and the right side are 1 Zeitschr. 1882, p. 204. 2 Lanzone, Diziou. Mit. pi. xv. p. 678. 3 Leps. Denkm. iii. 209 aiul 210. ‘2>m The _J, used as determinative for number nine, is frequently met with in inscriptions of that time. Cf. pi. iii. 1, and Goleuischeff, Stele Metteruich, p. 14. fairly well preserved, while the greater part of the left side and of the front has disappeared. These parts probably lie in the foundations of the bridge of Saft. On all four faces the lower part is occupied by three lines of an inscription in large characters, which I will call the dedi- catory, or historical, inscription. In front, the two doorposts are covered with two similar vertical inscriptions of nine lines each, containing hymns recited in honour of Sopt by the king himself, who is represented on the right as king of Lower Egypt, of which he wears the crown, and on the left as king of Upper Egypt. Of this last, there are but a few signs left. On the other faces, above the dedicatory in- scription, are six horizontal registers containing inscriptions and mythological representations. The cornice at the top was adorned with hawks spreading their wings over the cartouches of Nectanebo. The translation of the dedicatory inscription is not easy, on account of the many abbrevia- tions which occur in it. The scribe seems to ha ^e been afraid lest he might not have room enough, and so contracted the inscription as much as he could. On the front side it consists of the name of the king repeated three times, and preceded by one of the three qualities which are generally united in his title. He is said to love the local god who is called Sopt, the lord of the East ; the spirit of the East, ^ and the hawlc, or Horus of the East vv . Above, are the hymns pronounced by the king speaking as the god Thoth, to whom the hymns are attributed (pi. i.). Upper horizontal lines. . . . “ praise to Sopt given by the good god, the lord of the world Kheperkara ; the son of Ra the lord of diadems . . . (made) by Thoth himself, once when he celebrated this venerable god. 1. . . . “ in his house . . . against his enemies. He came and killed Apophis ; and opened the THE MONUMENTS DISCOVERED. ( good year ; 1 the gods and goddesses are re- joicing and exultant in his sanctuary for he chained the enemy with his wings. 2 . “ the divine hawk. The land of the East is in joy ; he has killed his enemies. 2 Mannu is in delight ; when this spirit has ascended and goes over his horizon, his ene- mies are cut to pieces. When he has crossed the sky with favourable winds, he reaches the good Ament, the inhabitants of the West are in joy ; 3. “ seeing he comes near them their limbs tremble in seeing him ; he is always in their mouths ; 3 none of them dare to rise ; their limbs are stretched before him ; he is the only one, he who chooses (?) where he will approach the mountain of Bakhu. When he rises 4. “ on that mountain, all the quadrupeds of the land are shouting to him ; his rays and his splendour are upon them ; he brings on the noon, when the mysterious hour has passed in Nut ; the stars of the North and South 4 have no rest. Horthema, his arms carry the lance ; he slays Apophis 5. “ in front of his boat ; Horus takes hold of the helm in order to steer the great boat. The mighty Safekh, the lady of writing, utters her sacred formulas in his divine barge. He came and smote his adversaries in his form of Ahti. 5 6. “ He himself causes his body to increase 6 V amam r :fc x K ^ j ^ he opened the good year. I believe the whole line has reference to astronomy. Brugsch, The- saurus, i. p. 77. — 1 ■*— O © Ml 2 i w. this hymn in which after a verb we find the two signs O which should be read Ra, where we expect to find only the pronoun The other instances are : 1. 1 |1 ^ ^ There are four instances in ^_o2_ O 12 I 1 . 8 I 3 They are incessantly praising him. 4 Brugsch, Thes. i. p. 30 and 32. This name appears only once in an inscrip- tion of Roman time, as that of a goddess. I suppose it means, he who holds the string or the net. s Cf. Todt. 87, 1. 3 in his name of Horus Sopt ; he completes it in the appointed hour in his name of Mahes ; he himself provides it with his limbs in his name 7. “ of Horus of the East. He smote them (his enemies) by the heat which is iu his body in his name of Horthema. He pierced them in one blow ; (their bodies) are thrown to the East and to Bakhu. He smote them 8. “ on the mountain of the East, their limbs are consumed by fire. He feels the good wind every day in his name of the victorious Horus. He increases every day in his name of Hor Sopt. Hail to thee to the limits of the sky, Sopt Harmachis who is . . . 9. . . . “ gods and goddesses ... of joy, every day are united pleasure and joy, spirit of the East, hawk of the East who is Ra in Bakhu, he crosses the sky himself ... on the East of his boat every day.” This hymn was the first text which presented itself to the eye of the spectator. We here find the repetitions which are so common in religious texts, and which often make them so tedious to the reader. Besides there are the singular etymologies where a proper name is derived from a word having a quite different meaning, but which sounds alike. The most striking example of those quibbles, for which the Egyptians seem to have had a great taste, is in 1. 6. The god is called mahes, a lion ; and why ? Because he completed mahsu (his body) him- self; mahsu is thus the origin of mahes, for no other reason than a similarity in the sound of the two words. The characteristic feature of the god on which the author of the hymn dwells at greatest length, is his warlike frame. He is a fighting- god, as we shall see further when we study the different forms which he assumes. I pass on now to the texts on the other sides of the naos, and first of all to the inscriptions in large characters which I have called dedicatory. I begin on the left side (pi. ii.), where it is 8 SAFT EL HEN'NEH. related under what circumstances the shrine was raised to the god. Part of the translation is conjectural, owing to the number of abbrevia- tions in the words. 1. “ The good god, the very brave, the de- stroyer who drives back . . . ; the wise and in- telligent who fights for Egypt against the rebels of the provinces, wdio treads under his feet the Asiatics, who delivers his abode from their violence ; the firm heart ; he who goes forth and never falls back 1 one instant ; who shoots with his bow at the right time; who provides temples by his great intelligence ; what he says 2 takes place immediately, as what comes forth from the mouth of Ra, the king of Upper and Lower Egypt, Kheperkara, the son of Ra Nekht- nebef . . . 2. “ This venerable god Sopt, the lord of the East, remembers his goodwill towards his majesty ; and all the gods, when he (the king) comes before them, are celebrating him in order that he take care of the divine bodies (images of the gods) during his lifetime and until many years afterwards When the king desired to pay special honours 3 to this god (Sopt) in a secret sanctuary wdricli was not known to the priests, and where all the gods of the province hid their bodies, the god put in the heart of the kins: to cause to be seen . . . 3. “ (after) many years, without knowing howit happened, they saw him distinctly, how he was raised upon his couch ; 4 then there was joy 1 /WVWN I believe here the to he an abbrevia- tion of the masc. pron. ^ (cf. Todt. 17, var. to 1. 7, 11, 18, &c.). We find several instances of the same kind: and f , 1 . 3 ]. 2 jr ■■ in this last instance the following words indicate that it is a god who is meant. We find also, pi. i. 1. 6, ^ |"l t 2 abbrev. for Cf. !. 3 for z i i i I read this expression : (2 I <2. v © (2 i in C~3 This is one of the most difficult parts. This sentence has saying: The prince has appeared in the East; he has adorned the world with his rays, thou art raised very high to be the victorious lord. Then the good god (the king) embellished his sanctuary, and made it the Amen kheperu (the hiding-place) of the lord of the East for his own body ; and all the gods who follow him are on his right, and all the gods in his place are on the left, and when he comes forth all his gods are before him like Ra when he appears on the horizon, and the like when he rests in his sanctuary every day.” Thus it was in commemoration of a miracle of some kind that the shrine was erected. It is most unfortunate that the end of the second line should be destroyed, as we do not know exactly what happened. However, it is clear j that either the priests did not know where the abode of the god was, or (which I think is more likely) that it was a place to which they had no access. The king decided that somethin^ in respect to those gods should be done ; but we do not see what it was, because of the gap in the stone. The result was that, after many years, a god whom I believe to be Sopt, is seen sud- denly raised on his couch. It was tbe cause of great rejoicing in the land, and Nectanebo named the sanctuary, “ the hiding-place of Sopt.” Such been quoted by Brugsch in the second part of his Dictionary (p. 1266), but not quite correctly, and without translation. S b ig a rare word which Brugsch considers as a different form of Zl n •<23- to look at. I think that this second verb adds to the word °°Jp the idea of seeing clearly, distinctly. I already referred to the pron. — m — employed instead of ^ in the masculine sense (I. 1). a. As for the word LTl^__j the phonetic reading is given in the Todt. 168 B 14, The word / ^ (j ]r nema in C3 nema means a couch, a bed with a lion’s or a ram’s head, exactly like that on which the hawk Sopt is sitting. The god whose body was hidden, suddenly appeared raised on his couch, I suppose in the form of a hawk, as we see him, pi. ii. 5, or as he appears in the ideo- graphic name of Sopt, pi. iii. 1. THE MONUMENTS DISCOVERED. 9 are the few facts to be gathered from the re- dundant style of the inscription. On the back, the inscription in large cha- racters does not contain anything historical ; it is purely laudatory, praising the high deeds and the qualities of the king (pi. iv.). 1. “ ... of the East, the destroyer, the issue of Horus of the East, the firstborn son of the god of the horizons, the only one, the strong- hold (?) of Egypt, who consumes the evildoer in the land and the rebellious around it, 1 the king of Upper and Lower Egypt, Kheperkara, the son of Ra, Nekhtnebef living eternally. 2. . . . the god of the horizon, who rises on the horizon, his yellow rays shine . . . all the human beings live in seeing the splendour of Horus on Bakliu ; all the gods celebrate him when they see him. 3. . . . thy throne, as victorious lord. The two worlds in all their extent leap for joy when thou risest on the horizon of Bakliu ... he threw the mountains in their valleys. It is he who protects Egypt, the eye of Ha, 2 and who watches over the bodies of the gods. I have enriched thy temple with all good things ; give me as reward the victory as to Ra, eternally. The inscription on the right side is far more interesting (pi. vi.). 1. “ The king of Egypt, Kheperkara, the son of Ra, Neklitnebef, has made monuments to his The beginning of this sentence has been translated twice by Brugsch (Diet. Part 2), once as: Dampfer der Mordthaten im Lande und der Rebellionen in seinem Umkreise (p. 934), and again: dampfend den Zermalmer im Lande (p. 1344). I believe it is more in accordance with the determinative of and its usual sense to translate it as consume, rather than ddmpfen, choke or quell. After g, g I supply the determinative A the transgressor or the evildoer. 1 quite agree with Brugsch that ^ is here a variant for ^==f Cf. pl.v.2: 2 IS" a name for Egypt; cf. pi. vi. 6. Brugsch, Diet. Pa,-, 2, p. 1339. father Sopt, the lord of the East, this shrine in black stone of granite. The doors which are in front are in black bronze adorned with gold ; and the image which is on it, of . . . and all that is (written) on the leather roll has been made of good work lasting eternally. As reward he has received a lon^ reiam, and all the nations bowed down under his feet. He lives like Ra eternally. 2. The good god, the kiug, ordered these things to be made of his own will himself, in order to preserve the divine body 3 in its abode, after his majesty had come to Kes in order to make offerings to this venerable god Sopt, the lord of the East, on his throne, as the victorious lord. Thus, after periods of years they will see . . . His majesty has chosen his abode in the lifetime of Kheperkara, his son who loves him, Neklitnebef, living eternally. 3. It is the king who himself ordered to raise the images to the gods of Kes on this shrine in the lifetime of his majesty ; all the gods are at their places, and they are as it is (written) on the leather roll, as well as all the sacred cere- monies ; 4 he provided that it should be cared for exactly without any negligence (?) in it, when . . . Thoth like a follower of the god of Hesert 5 according to the number of panegyries, living like Ra eternally.” This is in fact the most important inscription on the sanctuary ; it informs us that the place where Nectanebo erected the shrine was called in his time Kes. We shall revert in another chapter to this new geographical datum. The inscriptions in small character either f 0, ‘ ^e divine body, the statue or image of the god, which is called also www 1 pi. ii. 2, iv. 3. | . A ® all their ceremonies sacred; M i i ^ a rare form of Brugsch, Diet. Part 2, p. 134. 5 Mythological locality considered as the residence of Thoth. C 10 SAFT EL HENNEH. describe what is engraved underneath or relate what the gods have done to reward the king for his benefits. It is not possible to recognize the rule which the engravers have followed in the choice of their representations. Among these, we will first consider the god to whom the shrine is dedicated, and the different forms given to him. The most usual form of Sopt is that of a hawk, bare-headed (pi. v. 4), or wearing two feathers (pi. ii. 5); he is crouching either on a couch (pi. ii. 5) or on a stone base (id.); he may have before him the triangle ^ which reads “ Sopt,” and which is his name. This form we find in the hieroglyph by which the name of the nome is spelt. The hawk is the ordinary, but not the most ancient, form of Sopt in the time of Nectanebo, and consequently bears his full titles : Sopt, the spirit of the East, the haivlc or the Horns of the East (pi. iv. 6). Another hardly less usual at that time, is that of an ugly dwarf with large head and beard, wearing feathers, with outstretched arms and wings, having a knife in each hand. Thus represented, he is very like the god Bes. This form is called Sopt who smites the Asiatics (pi. ii. 6, &c.). A third form is that of a man having instead of a human head, the wing and head of a haw T k with two feathers. The body is crouched on a pedestal ; the left arm is raised like that of Amon ; the right holds a bow and arrows. He is called “ Sopt Shu, the son of Ra ” (pi. ii. 6); and on another monument, in the Louvre, “ the lord of war. 1 " Sopt Hor differs only slightly from Sopt Shu ; it is a hawk’s upper part on the body of a sitting man (pi. v. 4). The counterpart to this form is that of a standing man, with the tail and wings of a hawk, holding a knife in the left hand and the sign of life f in the right. He is called “ Sopt, the master effaces, most terrible ” (pi. ii. 5, or pi. v. 4). Sopt may also be figured in human form, wearing two feathers, with a long sceptre in one hand, and various emblems in the other. Thus represented, he is very like the god Anhur. This variety is very ancient. We have an early example in a stele from Wadi G-asus, now at Alnwick Castle, dating from the reign of Usertesen IT. another in a sculpture of Wadi Maghara of the eighteenth dynasty, 2 and another under Humeses II. 3 I am inclined to think that it is the oldest form of the god. He is then always called “ the lord of the East.” He is undoubtedly a warlike god. To him belongs the East ; namely, the provinces of the Eastern Delta as far as the Syrian frontier, as well as the district between the Nile and the Red Sea. He rises on the mountain of Bakhu, which is synonymous with the East ; and it is he who defends Egypt against the Eastern invaders, the Menti or the Fenlchu as they are called here, meaning of course the Persians, who were the most dangerous enemies of Nectanebo. Sopt is generally accompanied by one or several goddesses bearing the name of Khonset (pi. v. 3 and 4) ; as well as by various forms of Horus ( Ilormer , or Hor Si Isis), and by Amon represented under different forms, often with the body of a bird (pi. ii. 5). Among his attendants, one of the most usual is the lion Makes, who is generally represented as gnawing the head of a prisoner (pi. iii. 3, vi. 6, vii. 5) ; sometimes also as a man with a lion's head (pi. ii. 6, iii. 4). An inquiry into the rank which Sopt occupies in the Egyptian religion would here be out of place ; but I may say that from even a purely mythological point of view, the shrine of Saft, like other inscribed monuments of the Thirtieth Dynasty, is rich in valuable information. 4 I believe that a careful study of the texts relating 1 Ertnan, Zeitschr. 1882 p 204. * Leps., Denkra. iii. 28. :t Ibid., iii. 144. 1 For instance, the identity of Aiuou and Harmakhis (pi. ii. 1. 5 , pi. v. 1. 4). THE MONUMENTS DISCOVERED. II to the god Sopt would lead us to the conclusion that it is not the rising sun which he figures, but rather one of the planets — Venus, as the morning star. On the left side of the shrine, as far as we can judge from what remains, were represented various sacred arks which were deposited in the temple before the god. We first see the arks of Bast and Thoth (pi. ii. 4) ; it being always added that they are “ before Sopt.” Underneath was perhaps the ark of Amon (ii. 5), and that of Sopt Shu. Then comes the ark of Sopt the smiter of the Asiatics (6), and on the same line occur the four prin- cipal forms of Sopt, to whom, as well as to Hormer and Khonset, Nectanebo is making an offering. The inscriptions of 1. 4 and 1. 5 are very much alike. They only mention that these arks are “ engraved 1 according to the will of Nectanebo ” with his usual titles. 1. 6. “As a reward for all this which is ac- cording to the will of their son [of the son of the gods~\ who loves them, king Nectanebo, it is given to him the dignity of Ba . . . of Seb ; he is brave as they [the gods ] are brave; all the land leaps for joy, an the hearts are delighted in seeing their beauty ; his love extends all over the world, as Ba when he rises on Balchu, because of his great piety towards all the gods.” On the back (pi. iii. and iv.) are long pro- cessions of divinities. There we find the four names of the locality, some of which occur repeatedly. 1. The ideographic name ^ which is written, 1. 1, over two goddesses. 1 The word which I translate engrave or sculpture is 'll Q jj- jj 0 jj ( B rugsch, Diet. Part 2, p. 1 267) is to draw. The word /WW ' A adds the same idea as in French “ rapporter to draw or to engrave from a model, which in this case is a leather roll. I believe that alone (pi. iv. 6) is for jj 2. j P <= ^ > ^ the house of Sopt; pi. iii. 1. 4 and 1. 6. 3. ^ the abode of the sycamore, 1. 2. 4. the house of the sycamore, 1. 6. PI. iii. 1. 1, at the end, celebrates the victories of the king over various nations : The barbarians are struck under Ids feet, his hand is brave among the chiefs of the Greeks . 3 1. 2. We here find mention made of a book which is again quoted further on, and from which the designs on the shrine appear to have been copied. “ Chosen from the book, these images were made on this shrine ; they were engraved by the will 4 of king Nectanebo.” In 1. 3 is a subject which will be found again almost identical, pi. vi. 1. 6. It is explained in the following manner: “ These gods who reside in the shrine of TJntf on her right and her left, are standing on their abodes, in the house of the sycamore; they are engraved' by the will of king Nectanebo, living eternally ; as reward were given him panegyrics in great number; the mountains and the sand {the plain) are hoiking before him.” The shrine of Unt here mentioned, containing the same gods, is seen in pi. vi. 1. 6. There are two goddesses called Unt, one of the South, and one of the North. 1 4 speaks in the same way of the gods of the shrine of Sopt, the smiter of the Asiatics : “ These gods who reside in the shrine of Sopt, the smiter of the Asiatics, on his right and his left , and who stand in their places in Pa Sopt, are engraved by the will, fc.” They are the same we saw (pi. ii. 6) accompanying the 2 The tree 3 reads here JP nebs, pi. v. 2 and 3. ) i Haunehu, a word which, under the I i i eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties, has a much wider meaning, but which afterwards especially refers to the Greeks. &c., by the will or the command of ywv\ His Majesty. This formula occurs repeatedly. 5 Deity of one of the divisions of Egypt. 12 SAFT EL HENNEH. shrine in which they reside. On pi. iii. 1. 4, Nectanebo is making an offering to four animals o O over which is written : “ Thou art valiant and brave, thy hand, is grown to smite those who give trouble (?) to Egypt." Here probably followed a date, which has disappeared. PI. iv. 1. 5. These gods who stand on their abodes , another secret place was found for them in the holy space of the house of the sycamore. They are engraved according to the will of Icing Nectanebo. His majesty wished to pap special honour to his fathers, sanctifying their images ; each god is at his place, their images are on this shrine. 1. 6 begins with the king worshipping four gods : Another place was found inside of the temple chosen for them ; they are engraved, fc. And further : Engraved from another leather roll of the temple which is a book in sacred writing [ hieroglyphics ], they are engraved accord- ing to the book by the will of king Nectanebo ; his majesty directed these holy ceremonies to be done, he made them in the house of his father Sopt, the lord of the East ; when he raised the gods in their abode when they chose their abode in his lifetime. The throne of his majesty is established among the living as firm as the sky every day. In the dedicatory inscription we have already found mention made of the other leather roll, the sacred book containing the canon according to which all the ceremonies were instituted. On the right side (pi. v. and vi.) we find the /WWW * sycamore which is called J p (j nebs, and from which the temple derived one of its names. 1. 2 . ... to his fathers the lords of the abode of the sycamore. The sycamore is green, its boughs put forth their green leaves, the land is green in all its extent, the residence of this god, is green every day ; it puts forth its blossoms and all the good things ; the land of Kes is green in order that it may be radiant in his lifetime. In this line the sycamore is represented with the god Horns, who is considered as its inhabitant ; as in line 4 Shu and Tefnut, and in 1. 3 Hathor, are thus represented. The picture of the house of the sycamore is in 1. 3 ; we there see the tree inhabited by Sopt and Harmachis ; behind them are three different forms of Khonset ; before the tree are two serpents called the doorkeepers of the hall ; and in front of the hall is another vestibule occupied by two serpents, the doorkeepers of the vestibule on the way to the house of the sycamore. The inscription above reads thus : When the king Kheperkara, the image ofRa, the issue of the hawk of the East, the Sopt Shu of the temples, the great builder 1 (came to) this nome in order to make offerings to his fathers, the lords of the abode of the sycamore, perfecting Egypt in its appearance, renewing the abode of the sycamore, making it wholly afresh, all the land was in jog about it, everybody was delighted, for it was made according to the books of Ra ; when Ra joins the Rekhiu, 2 they cause the house of the sycamore to prosper. In 1. 4 we again see numerous forms of Sopt. The inscription appeals to the gods : “ Come and see all that has been done to you by your son who loves you, king Nectanebo who lives eternally; all the gods and goddesses . . . when Ra joins them, the Rekhiu smell the excellent things which he has done in the abode of Bakhu ; he caused your table to abound in all good offerings ; he renewed Mennu 3 without interruption ; the field is excellent enriching your altars ; give him as reward to be lord of the two parts of Egypt which are bowing to his will like Ra eternally.” 1. 5. “ His majesty directed all these sacred 1 O litt. the great of (lie buildings, the < d> /WWVA O —21 great builder. 1. 6 : 0 the able builder. It is thus that we must understand the inscription on the belt buckle of one of the colossal statues of Ilameses II. at Tauis (Flinders Petrie, Tanis, i. pi. v. 35 c) : Raineses the great builder. 2 Genii of the horizon, the nature of whom is not yet well known, 3 Proper name not identified, very likely another name of Sopt. THE MONUMENTS DISCOVERED. 13 things to be done ; [the gods] see what has been done in their house by their son who is on their throne, king Nectanebo living eternally ; as reward that he constructed their temples, he receives panegyries as Totunen, 1 and he is crowned as king of the world ; the human beings and the Rekhiu celebrate him ; all the land is bowing before his majesty because of his great power over them ; the water rises in its season, and is excellent through its benefits, because he pleased their hearts in truth, and the land lives by it [the w r ater] every day.” 1. 6. “ Come and see what his majesty has done towards you, lords of the abode of the sycamore ; reward him with the dignity of Turn and the duration of Ra as prince of the living beings ; all their hearts cling to him, all the foreign lands ... by his lance, their chiefs are protecting Egypt and guarding the Eye of Ra against those who bring trouble into it. Khe- perkara is himself its child who watches over the temples of all the gods for ever, for he is your son who loves you, the able builder in the house of the sycamore, the son of Ra, Nekhtnebef living eternally like Ra.” In line 6 we see Turn, or as his name is spelt here, A turn, in the form of an ichneumon. We find the same god again, pi. vii. 1 ; he resides (pi. vi. 1 . 6) in one of six different shrines which probably were in the temple with the rest. The gods wdio surround Unt occur also for the second time. It is to be observed that from line 3 and below, the inscription mentions of what material the statue of the god or the emblem was made, and indicates its height. We see, for instance, 1. 3, that the standing statue of Sopt is of gold and one cubit high, while the standing Horus behind the crouching Sopt, is of gilt sycamore wood and 5 palms high. In line 5 and line 6 several of the gods are said to be made of granite stone. The inner part of the shrine w r as also com- pletely decorated with sculptures ; there remains only part of one side on two blocks, one of which is at Bulak, the other at the isbet of Mustapha Pacha. They have been put together in pi. vii., in order to show how they correspond, but there is more space lost than is indicated on the plate. Most of the sculptures of the inside of the shrine are repetitions of the external decoration. The first line mentions the name of “ the hiding-place ” (cf. pi. ii. 3), which, as we have seen, was given to the sanctuary by king Nectanebo after the miracle occurred. We must also notice the name of ^ <£ ® the , (rwavTrj (rat avrw Ka$’ r/pwoiv ttoXiv, eh yrjv ’Papecrar/. Gen. xlvi. 28. 2 Duem. Geogr. Inschr. i. 92. 3 Diodorus (i. 54) says that the king Sesoosis (Sesostris) divided Egypt into thirty-six nomes, and established a governor over each. Whether we are here to consider Sesoosis as meaning Rameses II. or not, it is a fact that under the reign of his father, Seti I., Egypt was divided into thirty-seven nomes ; and that from that time to the reigu of the Ptolemies and the Romans, the number of the nomes of Lower Egypt varied, and were increased to twenty-two or twenty-three, according to the time, making for the whole of Egypt forty-four or forty-five. the Israelites settled in Egypt under the last Hyksos kings, the land of Goshen was an uncultivated district, not divided among Egyp- tian inhabitants regularly settled and governed ; but probably a kind of waste land, sufficiently watered to produce good pasturage. Thus it was a district which might be assigned to foreigners without despoiling the inhabitants of the country. Like the east in general, Goshen was under the protection of Sopt. That Rameses II. was a devotee of Sopt, and that he gave to this god a very high place among the divinities of Egypt, is also a well- established fact. On a wall in the temple of Karnak , 4 there is a bas-relief sculpture which represents Rameses II., w r ith uplifted mace, striking down a number of foreign captives which are brought to him by two gods, Amon, who is of colossal proportions, being the god of Thebes, and Sopt, the Lord of the East. Know- ing, as we do, the magnificence of Rameses II., and his taste for large buildings, we may reasonably conclude that he did for Sopt what he did for Amon, and that he erected in his honour a temple and a city which afterwards became Phacusa. This seems all the more probable, since there still remain upon the spot some fragments of a colossal statue of Rameses, indicating a construction of importance. That the country for some distance around Sopt should be called Ramses, whether he organized the nomes or not, is not extra- ordinary. This part of Egypt seems, in fact, to have been the favourite residence of the great Pharaoh. We have seen that his cartouche is found in most parts of the Eastern Delta. Tanis, Pithom, Sopt, Bubastis, Heliopolis, and the sites now occupied by the Tells of Kantir, Khataanah, Fakoos, Horbeit, and Rotab, all bear witness to that ambition of an earthly itninortality which caused him to sculpture his name throughout this part of the country. 4 Leps Deukm. iii. 144. PHACUSA, GOSHEN, RAMSES. 19 Hence the land might well be called “ the Land of Ramses.” Two important questions next arise : — By what name were Goshen and its environs known before the time of Rameses II. ; and does this name appear in the lists of Seti I., which, instead of the names of nomes, gives only the names of canals or marsh-lands ? I believe it is found in the lists of Abydos under the name of AAAAAA /WWW the water of Ra ; and AA/VWN l/jy-K I J that we have proof of it in the Great Harris Papyrus of the time of Rameses III. Enume- rating the benefits which the king confers on various localities, it mentions : — 1. “ The cattle which he offered to his mother, a Bast, heads 1533. 2. The servants which he gave to the temple of Bast, the lady of Bailos Jj <==> jj ^ ' ww ' ,v 50 ' n ^ ie wa ^ er °f ^ 69. 3. Tliehouseof RamesesHik On (RamesesIII.) in the temple of Sutekh, in the house of Rameses Mer-Amon (Rameses II.) (servants?), 106.” Then comes (1. 4) the cattle consecrated to his father, the god Horns of Athribis (Benha). Bailos 1 has been identified by Brugsch with Belbeis, which belonged to the land of Goshen. We have seen how often the goddess Bast is represented on the shrine of Nectanebo, which shows that she was one of the principal divini- ties of the country. The first line, in which the king speaks of his mother Bast, refers most likely to the great temple of Bubastis towards the north. Line 4 mentions Athribis (Benha), which bounded the district on the west, so that our identification of “the water of Ra ” with Goshen, and of Bailos with Belbeis, would meet the requirements of the text. Curiously enough, this expression, “ the water of Ra,” might be the origin of the name of Ain iSlierns before mentioned, and which later authors unanimously apply to the city of Heliopolis on D account of the spring of Matarieh. It may be that this identification of Ain Shems with Heliopolis arose from the fact that the original meaning of the expression was lost. The con- fusion was, at all events, the more easy because Heliopolis and Goshen are closely connected. We have seen that the old list of nomes comes to an end with the nome of Heliopolis ; but if we examine the more recent lists, we find that the marsh-land ( Pehu ) of Phacusa bears the same name as the canal belonging to the Helio- polite nome. The water of Phacusa came from the canal of Heliopolis ; therefore the district of Sopt must have been to a certain degree a dependency of Heliopolis for so long as it was not separately organized. This I believe to be the reason why so many ancient writers, from the Septuagint downwards, connect the site occupied by the Israelites with Heliopolis. In the meanwhile, it may be asked, Where was the city of Ramses ? To that question I am not as yet prepared to give a definite answer. Is it Phacusa, where we found the colossal statue of the king? I am inclined to think so, although the position of Phacusa does not answer to the position of Ramses in the extract made by Mr. Gamurrini from the before-men- tioned Pilgrimage. The good woman relates that on leaving Heroopolis she went to the land of Goshen, which was sixteen miles distant, and that she passed through Ramses, which was only four miles distant from the capital of Arabia. This city, which had been built by the Israelites during their captivity, was then entirely de- stroyed. She there beheld a great mass of ruins, and amid them a large stone, like the great stones of Thebes, on which were sculp- tured two colossal figures. The people of the place said that these figures represented Moses and Aaron. There also she saw a small syca- more-tree, said to have been planted by the patriarchs, and called “ the Tree of Truth.” This she was told by the Bishop of Arabia, who came to meet her. 2 See the Appendix. 20 PHACUSA, GOSHEN, RAMSES. In this narrative there are, I believe, but two facts to be accepted. We learn, in the first place, that the people of the fourth century still believed Ramses to have been in the nome of Arabia ; and in the second place, we find that the tradition of the sycamore-tree of Sopt was yet surviving, though clothed in Christian garb. It was no longer the tree of the god. It is a tree planted by the patriarchs, and called the Tree of Truth. As for the site which our tra- veller assigns to Ramses, I do not believe that we can place confidence in it, or in the distances which she gives. The monks who were her guides, passing the site of a ruined city, were but too likely to speak of it as the scene of some remarkable event, and the good woman who had journeyed all the way from Gaul to see these famous places was, of course, eager to believe whatever she was told. More important by far is the line already quoted from the Great Harris Papyrus, which I transcribe in full : C~3 I P \ ^ H S 1 “ The house of Rameses Hik On (Rameses III.) in the temple of Sutekh, in the house of Rameses Mer-Amon (Rameses II.).” It comes between line 2, mentioning Bailos, and line 4, mentioning Athribis (Benha), and it shows that in this region there was a city called the house of Rameses Meri Amon (Rameses II.), containing a temple of Sutekh, where Rameses III. built a temple to his own name. It is difficult not to regard this Rameses as the city which is spoken of in connection with the land of Goshen. To sum up, I submit that Goshen, properly speaking, was the land which afterwards became the Arabian nome, viz. the country round Saft el Henneh east of the canal Abu-l-Munao^e, a district comprising Belbeis and Abbaseh, and probably extending further north than the Wadi Tumilat. The capital of the nome was Pa Sopt, called by the Greeks Phacusa, now Saft el Henneh. At the time when the Israelites occupied the land, the term “ Goshen ” belonged to a region which as yet had no definite boun- daries, and which extended with the increase of the people over the territory they inhabited. The term “ land of Ramses ” applies to a larger area, and covers that part of the Delta which lies to the eastward of the Tanitic branch ; a country which Rameses II. enriched with in- numerable works of architecture, and which corresponds with the present province of Shar- kieh. As for the city of Ramses, it was situate in the Arabian nome. Probably it was Phacusa ; but the identification cannot be regarded as an established fact. KHATAANAH, KAN TIE. About two miles towards the north-east of the present station of Fakoos, is a large village called Dedamoon. Following the course of the Bahr Fakoos, one presently reaches the small village of Khataanah, close to which is an isbet (farm) belonging to a high dignitary. 1 On this farm are three mounds, which I partly ex- cavated during the winter of 1885. They all three lie within the area of a city which must have been large, for the land is covered with fragments of pottery for a considerable distance around. The largest of these mounds, to the southward, stands on the edge of the desert, and on the verge of the cultivated land just opposite Khataanah. On the top are some ruins of a large enclosure of crude bricks, in- side which the soil consists of debris of houses, stones, and pottery. Along the western side of this enclosure, the ground is covered with chips of calcareous stone, which clearly indicates that lime-burning has there been actively carried on. In Lower Egypt, where stone is scarce, every piece of limestone is at once taken and burnt for lime, which accounts for the destruc- tion of a vast number of monuments, and espe- cially of those which, like many temples of the twelfth dynasty, were not made of hard stone. I worked for more than a month with about a hundred labourers in the area of the enclosure, and especially towards the western side, and went down as far as the water allowed. I found evidences of the site of a temple. On one side I uncovered the bases of six columns of calcareous stone ; on the other, a pavement upon which had probably stood a granite shrine ; but I found no inscriptions of any kind, except one stone bearing the two cartouches of Seti (pi. ix. d). One of the cartouches of this Pharaoh I also found upon a piece of enamelled pottery, which is now in the British Museum. I also discovered the lower part of the two cartouches of Si Amen (pi. ix. e), a king who seems to have exercised great authority in Lower Egypt, whose name is often found at Tanis, and whom I consider to be the usurper Herhor, the founder of the dynasty of priest- kings. 2 In the centre of the enclosure, and on the top of the highest mound, is a sphinx of black granite, the head being broken off, and a much- erased inscription between the fore-paws. Al- though I made several squeezes of the inscrip- tion, and looked at it in all possible lights, I am not certain that my reading is correct ; but it seems to me to be the name of Sebekneferu, of the Thirteenth Dynasty. All around this sphinx I sunk very deep pits ; and at a depth of about ten feet, I found a few large oval urns containing ashes, pieces of charcoal, and bones. Some of the bones were decidedly those of animals, while others might be human. In and around each of these urns, I found a number of small pots of black and red earthen- ware, and some small cups and saucers. These pots seem to have been made for oil and per- fumes ; and some are so shaped that they cannot stand upright. Also, round about the urns, I found a few scarabs, two bronze knives, and some small flints. The little black and red pots are of an entirely new type ; but the ware of which they are made, as also the cups found with them, exactly resembles what is found at 1 Cf. the report of M. Maspero, Zeitschr. 1885, p. 12. 2 Cf. Naville, Inscr. de Pinotem, p. 16. 22 KHATAANAH, KAJNTIR. Abydos in tombs of the Thirteenth Dynasty. The evidence of the scarabs is, however, con- clusive, since one of them is inscribed with the name of a king of that period. We have thus a burial-place of the Thirteenth Dynasty, which corresponds with the name I deciphered on the sphinx, and is consequently anterior to the time of the Hyksos kings. I found but a few of these urns ; all were broken in many pieces, and I could not discover whether the fragments of bones which they contained were human or not. If human, it would be important to know that the dead were sometimes burnt under the Thirteenth Dynasty, and not always mummified. This would be a most curious discovery in a country where so much care was taken to preserve the bodies of the dead. The isbet or farm of Khataanah is situate about half a mile farther north, in the direction of the Bahr Fakoos. Two years ago, the fella- heen, when digging for sebakh, came across a very large block of red granite, which had formed the lintel-stone of a doorway, possibly leading to the temple. This lintel was sup- ported by two pillars also of granite, one of which is yet extant, but broken in two. The presence of water, and the necessity of not endangering the neighbouring houses, pre- vented me from digging as much as I should have desired, and I could not turn the lintel, because of its enormous weight. However, I dug down to the original pavement of the door- way, and I contrived to turn the fragments of the pillar. These fragments were inscribed with the names of three kings of the Twelfth Dynasty : Amenemha I. on the lintel (pi. ix. a 1); on one of the sides of the pillar, Usertesen III. (a 3) ; and another Amenemha, who must be Amenemha III., as it is said that he renewed what his father, Usertesen, had made. To the previous dynasty, the eleventh, must be attri- buted a statuette of black granite found also on the land of the isbet , and which belonged to a queen called Sent, whose name is preceded by the usual titles (pi. ix. b). Further north, but still within the area of the old city, is another mound called Tell Abou el Feloos. I here found nothing but Roman pottery. The place is distinctly an old Roman settlement. Between the Tell and the Bahr Fakoos are two wells of cement, which are also undoubtedly Roman. No geographical name has turned up; we therefore do not know how this city was called, though it must have been a large and important place, and have lasted a long time, considering that it contains relics dating as early as the Twelfth Dynasty, and others as late as the Twenty-first. When this city was abandoned, we know not. Perhaps the Romans themselves contributed to its destruction when they occu- pied Tell Aboo el Feloos, which possibly was only a camp situate on the Pelusiac branch, the bed of which is easily traceable at the foot of the mound. It may, perhaps, be one of those military stations mentioned in the “ Notitia Dignitatum,” of which oidy a very small number have been identified. 1 Under the Nineteenth Dynasty, when the temple of Khataanah was yet standing, another had been built, about three miles further north, on the site of the present village of Kantir. I had been told of a great granite block there, and I went over to look at it. It is the base of a large column bearing the ovals of Rameses II. All around this village are cultivated fields, and the people told me that they often came across antiquities. For instance., they brought me a small broken tablet which is now at the Bulak Museum (pi. ix. r). A fellah showed me in his field a basalt base inscribed with beautiful hieroglyphs of Rameses II. That some important buildings had once occupied this site was, however, conclusively proved in the course of a visit which I paid to an old bey who 1 Cf. Par they, Zur Erdkiinde Aegyptens, pi. 8. KHATAANAH, KANTIR. 23 is one of the great landowners of Kantir. He offered to show me some inscribed stones which he had at his house, and I followed him to a small chamber in the farmyard, where there lay a heap of stones, the remains of a much greater number which the bey had found in his garden, and which had been burnt for lime. Among them were parts of the side-pillars of a door, inscribed with the cartouche of Rameses II., followed by the words which ended the inscrip- tion, ^ “ the living god” Other fragments, also of limestone, were scattered in various parts of the farm. The slab which formed the lintel of the door was covered with manure, and when cleansed, it disclosed the name of Rameses II. (pi. ix. G 1). The base of a column was used as a step to get into one of the rooms ; it bears an inscription which speaks of the king as “ the good god who is a lion against the Phoenicians , and who loves Set ” (pi. ix. g 2). When I went first to Kantir, at the end of January, the water was too near the surface of the soil to permit of any attempt at excavation. I went again in the month of April, with Mr. Petrie. The harvest had not yet been gathered, and it was not possible to work. We attempted to secure the inscribed stones which we saw in the farm of the old bey, but although we offered a very high price, he would not part from them, and it is only too likely that they now have shared the fate of the rest. We may, however, conclude from these scanty remains that at Kantir there must have been a temple built by Rameses II., and, judging from the size of the granite block still extant, that it must have been of some importance. Although I most carefully examined all the fragments in the farmyard, I could not discover any geographical name. We see, however, that Rameses was called the “ good god,” and that he worshipped Set. The tablet which I pur- chased at Kantir (pi. ix. f) indicates that Amon was also worshipped there, with the peculiar title, “ he who finds the icay ” or “ the far re- moved.” At first sight the name of the king seems to indicate Rameses III. ; it is not, how- ever, impossible that it may be Rameses II., who in several instances attributed to himself the title of Prince of On, 1 which afterwards became the distinctive name of Rameses III. Leps. Konigsbuch, pi. 33. TELL EOTAB. In the Wadi Tumilat, on the border of the desert, one mile south of the lock of Kassassin, stands the mound called Tell Rotab (pi. xi.). It is situate near the remains of the ancient canal, and consists of a brick enclosure which, except on the north side, is nearly perfect. The enclosed area is about 400 metres long and 150 wide. The ground rises very con- siderably towards the middle, and on the top stands a rough granite block without any in- scription. The large bricks with which the enclosure is built, cause it to look very like that of Tell el Maskhutah, with this difference, that, instead of being carefully built with cement, the bricks seem to have been piled over one another in great haste, at least in that part of the enclosure which is above the sand (pi. xi., section). Being anxious to identify the sites of the Wadi Tumilat, I made an attempt to excavate at Tell Rotab, which was entirely un- successful. The great number of fragments of hard stone which bestrew the mound, the numerous remains of brick houses, and the large granite block, caused me to hope that something interesting might perhaps be dis- covered; but this, unfortunately, was not the case. I cut trenches and sunk pits more than 80 feet deep, as indicated on the map ; but the result w T as very trifling. I found two other granite blocks as large as the first, but without inscriptions ; a fragment of limestone with the second cartouche of Rameses II.; abronze sword, or rather an Egyptian Q ^ Ichopsh , now in the British Museum; and a piece of a blue enamelled saucer bearing this inscription written in cha- racters of the style of the Saite period (pi. ix. i) : “ in his elevation : the chief of the prophets of the gods , the lords of” . . . Despite a most careful search, 1 could never find the other fragments ; and although no very trustworthy evidence might be derived from a small frao-- ment, the geographical name which ought to have followed exactly where the saucer is broken, might perhaps have given us a clue for the identification. I also found a few scarabs; one inscribed with the name of Rameses II., and another with a name which seems to be Si Amen . The resemblance of this place to Tell el Mas- khutah induced me to begin on the western side, where I supposed the temple would have been ; but I there found, as elsewhere throughout the Tell, only a bed of black soil interspersed with layers of lime and charred ashes. At the top I found a few large jars, each with a smaller one inside, containing ashes. This must have been a burial-place of later time. Brick walls and remains of houses are also extant on the Tell ; but it contains no storehouses like those of Pithom. The place seems to have been in- habited during a long period ; the scanty re- mains discovered showing that it was occupied under the Nineteenth Dynasty. The houses were built and rebuilt on the same spot during so many centuries that their ruins have caused an accumulation of more than thirty feet of artificial soil, which I had to cut through before I reached the natural soil. The houses after a time stood higher than the enclosure wall, which they entirely covered on the northern side. The most interesting part of the work was when cutting through the enclosure, which I did on three sides. I thus discovered that the original enclosure on the southern and eastern sides was below the present soil, and of the best workmanship. The bricks are among the TELL ROTAB. 25 largest I saw in Egypt, being more than 16 inches long, which indicates the time of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Dynasties. 1 The ground having risen inside, the enclosure was perhaps not sufficiently high, and the inhabi- tants were compelled to build another. They did not, however, take pains to build the second wall as well as the first ; they merely took the old bricks and put them roughly together, making it considerably wider than at first. On the eastern side, they built it partly on the old enclosure and partly on the soil, which is there perfectly clean sand. On the southern side, they built it on the sand inside the old wall, which is still perfect, and where one sees a recessing of the brick-work which must have been a pathway used for the defence. Curiously, the eastern side is made of bricks of two different descriptions, the upper ones being made of the ordinary Nile mud, while the lower are of a kind of bluish sand which has become as hard 1 Petrie, The Domestic Remains of Ancient Egypt, p. 16. as the mud. These last are even larger than the upper ones, for they exceed 17 inches in length. On the west side, where the original enclosure seems to have been destroyed, the workmen or soldiers who built the second wall made up for good workmanship by great thick- ness. The whole place indicates a camp, probably of late Roman time. It must have been one of the military stations posted along the course of the canal leading to the Red Sea, and it may have been another of the garrisons mentioned in the “ Notitia Dignitatum.” From the quantity of sling stones which are on the Tell, one may gather that it was a camp of slingers. No Roman inscription was found. The map shows all the trenches and pits which I made at Tell Rotab. Further excavations might lead to the discovery of some inscribed fragment, but it would be quite fortuitous ; and there are no external indications to direct the excavator to one place rather than to another. E APPENDIX. BAILOS. It is most desirable that the site of this city should be identified from monuments found on the spot. Our documentary knowledge of it is founded upon two texts only ; i.e. the passage from the Great Harris Papyrus quoted above, and another from the famous inscription of Meneplitali, whom I believe to be the king of the Exodus, and who repelled an invasion of foreign nations in the fifth year of his reign. The passage from the inscription of Meneph- tah at Thebes reads thus in Dr. Duemichen’s edition (Hist. Insclir. i. pi. 2, 1. 7) : u 1 1 1 n i AAAAM /WWW /wwv\ pip \> i -4m III /WW/W /WA/WA /WWW nz=i \> Brugscli translates from this reading (Geogr. Diet. p. 77) : . . . their tents in front of the city of Pi Bailos, near the canal Shalcana, on the north of the canal Ati (of Heliopolis). De Rouge’s version (Iuscr. Hier. pi. 180) shows the following differences : — ra • w . . . i i i The end of the sentence he translates : making a ■well (?) to draw water . . . (Pierret, Lex. p. 601). A revision which I made myself in 1869 from Duemichen’s copy confirms De Rouge’s version, especially in the group where the <= is quite distinct. Thus it cannot be “north;” while De Rouge’s translation “ draw ” is corro- borated. Whatever discrepancy there has been in the translations, the two copies agree as to the last word, which Brugscli considers as the name (which occurs elsewhere) of the canal of Heliopolis (Brugscli, Diet. Geog. p. 76). I need only point to the great interest of the line following, written, it is to be remembered, in the time of Meneplitali. It says that “ the country around was not cultivated, hut left as pasture for cattle because of the strangers. It was abandoned since the time of the ancestors ” (cf. Rouge, Mem. sur les Attaques dirigees contre l’Egypte, p. 39 ; Brugscli, Gescli. Aeg. p. 569). B. ou,l> BLock/s first/ Irougtd' in Boobofk •/ S. a/ b.o.dj (lug nut at, Sad d dcnneh M. Bbock at/ the/ Ulet/ of Muetapka, Padua C „ Jri/sj/j/sb mil/ of t/fie/ ca/inj. 3 . 5 y/. G 7