Let us follow Herodotos in his Egyptian journey and meet him where he
landed at the Kanôpic mouth of the Nile. The place had been known to Greek
sailors in days of which tradition alone had preserved a memory. It was
here that pirates and traders had raided the fields of the _fellahin_ or
exchanged slaves and Ægean vases for the precious wares of Egypt in the
age when Achæan princes ruled at Mykenæ and Tiryns. Guided by the island
of Pharos, they had made their way a few miles eastward to the mouth of
the great river which is called Aigyptos in the _Odyssey_.
When Egypt was at last opened to Greek trade and enterprise in the time of
the twenty-sixth dynasty it was still the Kanôpic arm of the Nile towards
which their vessels had to steer. Nowhere else were they allowed to land
their goods or sail up the sacred stream of the Nile. If stress of weather
drove them to some other part of the coast, they were forced to remain
there till the wind permitted them to sail to Kanôpos or to send their
goods in native boats by the same route. From time immemorial the coast of
the Delta had been carefully guarded against the piratical attacks of the
barbarians of the north. Watch-towers and garrisons were established at
fitting intervals along it, which were under the charge of a special
officer. The mouth of the Kanôpic branch of the river was guarded with
more than usual care, and here was the custom-house through which all
foreign goods had to pass.
Kanôpos, from which the arm of the river took its name, was a small but
wealthy city. It was called in Egyptian Peguath, sometimes also Kah-n-Nub,
“the soil of gold” from the yellow sand on which it was built, though
Greek vanity believed that this name had been given to it from Kanôbos,
the pilot of Menelaos, whose tomb was of course discovered there. In later
days, when Alexandria had absorbed its commerce and industry, it became,
along with the outlying Zephyrion, a fashionable Alexandrine suburb. It
was filled with drinking-shops and chapels, to which the pleasure-loving
crowds of Alexandria used to make their way by the canal that united the
two cities. The sick came also to seek healing in the temple of Serapis,
or to ask the god to tell them the means of cure. The rich, too, had their
villas close to the shrine of Aphroditê Arsinoê, on the breezy promontory
of Zephyrion, while the rocks on the shore were cut into
luxuriously-fitted baths for those who wished to bathe in the sea.
The site of Zephyrion is now occupied by the little village of Abukîr,
memorable in the annals of England and France. In 1891 Daninos Pasha made
some excavations there which brought to light a few scanty remains of the
temple of Aphroditê. The foundations of its walls were found, as well as
two limestone sphinxes inscribed with the name of Amon-em-hat IV., and
three great statues of red granite, one of them upright, the others
seated. The upright figure was that of Ramses II. with a roll of papyrus
in his hand; while the other two were female, one of them being a
representation of Hont-mâ-Ra, the Pharaoh’s wife. The sphinxes and statues
must have been brought from some older building to decorate the shrine of
the Alexandrine goddess, and their discoverer believes that the figure of
Ramses II. is older even than the age of that monarch, who has usurped it,
and that it goes back to the epoch of the twelfth dynasty. Other relics of
the temple—fragments of red granite from some gigantic naos, portions of
statues, broken sphinxes, and a colossal human foot—strew the rocks at the
foot of the promontory whereon Zephyrion stood and bear witness to the
intensity of Christian zeal when paganism was abolished in Egypt.
The Kanôpic arm of the Nile has long since been filled up, and the
_fellah_ ploughs his field or the water-fowl congregate in the stagnant
marsh where Greek trading ships once sailed. But a large part of the marsh
is now in process of being reclaimed, and the engineers who have been
draining and washing it have come across many traces of the ancient
Kanôpos. It lay to the east of Zephyrion, between the shore and the marshy
lake.
Though the journey from Alexandria to Abukîr must now be undertaken in a
railway carriage and not in a barge, it is still pleasant in the early
autumn. We pass through fertile gardens and forests of fig-trees, past
groves of palm with rich clusters of red dates hanging from them, while
the cool sea-breeze blows in at the window, and the clear blue sky shines
overhead. But instead of temples and taverns we find at the end of our
journey nothing but sand and sea-shells, broken monuments, and a deserted
shore.
The vessel in which Herodotos must have gone from Kanôpos to Naukratis was
probably native rather than Greek. It would have differed in one important
respect from the Nile-boats of to-day. Its sail was square, not triangular
like the modern lateen sails which have been introduced from the Levant.
But in other respects it resembled the vessels which are still used on the
Nile. Part of the deck was covered with the house in which the traveller
lived, and which was divided into rooms, and fitted up in accordance with
the ideas of the day. Awnings protected it from the sun, and the sides of
the boat as well as the rudder were brilliantly painted.
On the way to Naukratis the voyager passed Hermopolis, the modern
Damanhur, a name which is merely the old Egyptian _Dema n Hor_, or “City
of Horus.” It is not surprising, therefore, that Herodotos refers to the
city, though the statement he makes in regard to it is not altogether
correct. All the dead ibises of Egypt, he says, were carried to Hermopolis
to be embalmed and buried. Such might have been the case on the western
side of the Delta, but it was true only of that limited district. There
was another Hermopolis in the east of the Delta, called Bah in ancient
Egyptian, Tel el-Baqlîyeh in modern times, where a large burial-place of
the sacred ibises was discovered by the _fellahin_ six or seven years ago.
Tel el-Baqlîyeh is the second station on the line of railway from Mansurah
to Abu Kebîr, and from it have come the bronze ibises and ibis-heads which
have filled the shops of the Cairene dealers in antiquities. The bronzes
were found among the multitudinous mummies of the sacred bird, like the
bronze cats in the cemetery of the sacred cat at Bubastis. Bah was, in
fact, the holy city of the “nome of the Ibis.” The mound of the old city
has now been almost demolished by the hunter for _antikas_, but Dr.
Naville noticed some fragments of inscribed stone in the neighbouring
village which led him to believe that Nektanebo II. once intended to erect
a temple here to Thoth.
From Hermopolis to Naukratis was a short distance. Naukratis was the
capital of the Egyptian Greeks, and its site, which had been lost for
centuries, was discovered by Professor Flinders Petrie in 1884, when he
was working for the Egypt Exploration Fund. The Fund had been formed with
the primary intention of finding the sites of Pithom and Naukratis, and it
had been hardly two years in existence before that intention was
fulfilled.
If we leave the train at Teh el-Barûd, the junction of the Upper Egyptian
line of railway with that from Alexandria to Cairo, and turn our faces
westward, we shall have a pleasant walk of about five miles, part of it
under an avenue of trees, to a mound of potsherds which covers several
acres in extent and is known to the natives as Kôm Qa’if. This mound
represents all that is left of Naukratis. To the west of it runs a canal,
the modern successor of the ancient Kanôpic branch of the Nile.
When Professor Petrie first visited the spot, the diggers for _sebah_ had
already been busily at work. _Sebah_ is the nitrous earth from the sites
of old cities, which is used as manure, and to the search for it we owe
the discovery of many memorials of the past. At Kôm Qa’if the larger part
of the earth had been removed, and all that remained were the fragments of
pottery which had been sifted from it. But the fragments were sufficient
to reveal the history of the place. Most of them belonged to the archaic
period of the Greek vase-maker’s art, and were such as had never before
been found in the land of Egypt. It was evident that the great city whose
site they covered must have been the Naukratis of the Greeks.
As soon as Professor Petrie had settled down to the excavation of the
mound, a few months after his discovery, the evidence of inscriptions was
added to the evidence of potsherds. An inscribed stone from the mound was
standing at the entrance of the country-house in which he lived, and on
turning it over he found it was engraved with Greek letters which recorded
the honours paid by “the city of the Naukratians” to Heliodôros the priest
of Athêna and the keeper of its archives. For two winters first Mr. Petrie
and then Mr. Ernest Gardner worked at the ruins, and though more
excavations are needed before they can be exhaustively explored, the plan
of the old city has been mapped out, the history of its growth and decline
has been traced, and a vast number of archaic Greek inscriptions from the
dedicated vases of its temples have been secured.
To the south of the town were the fortress and camp of the Greek
mercenaries, who were probably settled there by Psammetikhos. The camp was
surrounded by a wall, and within it stood the Hellênion, the common altar
of the Ionians from Khios, Teos, Phokæa and Klazomenæ, of the Dorians from
Rhodes, Knidos, Halikarnassos and Phasêlis, and of the Æolians of
Mytilênê. The great enclosure still remains, as well as the lower chambers
of the fort, and Mr. Petrie found that in the time of Ptolemy
Philadelphus, when it was no longer needed for purposes of defence, it was
provided with a stately entrance, to which an avenue of ruins led from the
west.
The traders and settlers built their houses north of the camp. Here too
the Greek sailors and merchants, who had taken no part in the erection of
the great altar, and who perhaps had no relations among the soldiers of
the fort, built special temples for themselves. If we walk across the
level ground which separates the fort from the old city, the first heap of
rubbish we come to marks the site of the temple and sacred enclosure of
Castor and Pollux. A little to the north was the still larger temple and
_temenos_ or sacred enclosure of Apollo, and adjoining it, still on the
north side, was the temple of Hêrê, whose _temenos_ was the largest of
all. The temple of Apollo had been erected by the Milesians, and that it
was the oldest in the city may be gathered from the archaic character of
the inscriptions on the potsherds discovered in the trench into which the
broken vases of the temple were thrown. The Samians were the builders of
the temple of Hêrê, and Herodotos tells us that there was another
dedicated to Zeus by the Æginetans. The ruins of this, however, have not
yet been found, but far away towards the northern end of the ruin a small
temple and _temenos_ of Aphroditê have been brought to light. Here
Rhodôpis worshipped, who had been freed from slavery by the brother of
Sappho, and whose charms were still celebrated at Naukratis in the days of
Herodotos.
Among the potsherds disinterred from the rubbish-trench of the temple of
Apollo were portions of a large and beautiful bowl dedicated to “Phanês,
the son of Glaukos.” Mr. Gardner is probably right in believing that this
is the very Phanês who deserted to Kambyses, and, according to the Greek
story, instructed him how to march across the desert into Egypt. It may be
that Herodotos saw the bowl when it was still intact, and that the story
of the deserter was told him over it; in any case, it was doubtless at
Naukratis, and possibly from the priests of Apollo, that he heard it.
To the west of the temple of Apollo and divided from it only by a street,
Mr. Petrie found what had been a manufactory of scarabs. They were of the
blue and white kind that was fashionable in the Greek world in the sixth
century before our era, and the earliest of them bear the name of Amasis.
From Naukratis they were exported to the shores of Europe and Asia along
with the pottery for which the Greek city was famous.
On his way to Naukratis Herodotos had passed two other Greek settlements,
Anthylla and Arkhandropolis. But we do not yet know where they stood. Nor
do we know the position of that “Fort of the Milesians” which, according
to Strabo, was occupied by Milesian soldiers near Rosetta in the time of
Psammetikhos, before they sailed upon the river into “the nome of Sais”
and there founded Naukratis.
The city of Sais was one of the objects of Herodotos’s journey. In the
period of the inundation it was within an easy distance of Naukratis, so
that an excursion to it did not require much time. Sais was the birthplace
and capital of the Pharaohs of the twenty-sixth dynasty; it was here that
Psammetikhos raised the standard of rebellion against his Assyrian
suzerain with the help of the Greek mercenaries, and his successors
adorned it with splendid and costly buildings. When Herodotos visited it,
it had lost none of its architectural magnificence. He saw there the
palace from which Apries had gone forth to attack Amasis, and to which he
returned a prisoner; the great temple of Neit, with its rows of sphinxes
and its sacred lake; and the huge naos of granite which two thousand men
spent three whole years in bringing from Assuan. It had been left just
outside the enclosure within which the temple stood, as well as the tombs
of Apries and Amasis, and even of the god Osiris himself. True, there was
a rival sepulchre of Osiris at Abydos, venerated by the inhabitants of
Upper Egypt since the days of the Old Empire, but Abydos was far distant
from Sais, and when the latter city became the capital of the kingdom
there was none bold enough to deny its claim. Herodotos, at all events,
who never reached Abydos, was naturally never informed of the rival tomb.
He was told, however, of the mystery-play acted at night on the sacred
lake of Sais in memory of the death and resurrection of Osiris, and he was
told also of the shameful insult inflicted by Kambyses on the dead Amasis.
It was said that the Pharaoh’s mummy had been dragged from its
resting-place, and after being scourged was burnt to ashes. The Egyptian
priests bore no good-will to Kambyses, and it may be, therefore, that the
story is not true.
Sais was under the protection of the goddess Neit, the unbegotten mother
of the sun. When the Greeks first came there, they identified the goddess
with their own Athêna, led thereto by the similarity of the names. But
this identification led to further results. As Athêna was the patron
goddess of Athens, so it was supposed that there was a special connection
between Sais and Athens. While Athêna was fabled to have come from Libya,
Kekrops, the mythic founder of Athens, was transformed into an Egyptian of
Sais. It was from a priest of Sais, moreover, that Solon, the Athenian
legislator, learned the wisdom of the Egyptians.
The squalid village of Sa el-Hagar, “Sais of the stone,” is the modern
representative of the capital of Psammetikhos. In these days of railways
it is difficult of access, as there is no station in its neighbourhood. In
the earlier part of the century, however, when the traveller had to go
from Alexandria to Cairo in a dahabîyeh, he was compelled to pass it, and
it was consequently well-known to the tourist. But little is left of the
populous city and its stately monuments except mounds of disintegrated
brick, a large enclosure surrounded by a crude brick wall seventy feet
thick, and the sacred lake. The lake, however, is sacred no longer;
shrunken in size and choked with rubbish, it is a stagnant pool in the
winter, and an expanse of half-dried mud in the late spring. It is
situated within the great wall, which is that of the _temenos_ of Neit.
Stone is valuable in the Delta, and hardly a fragment of granite or
limestone survives from all the buildings and colossal monuments that
Herodotos saw. But in 1891 a great number of bronze figures of Neit, some
of them inlaid with silver, were found there by the _fellahin_. They are
of the careful and finished workmanship that marks the age of the
twenty-sixth dynasty, and on one of the largest of them is a two-fold
inscription in Egyptian hieroglyphs and the letters and language of the
Karians. It was dedicated to the goddess of Sais in the reign of
Psammetikhos by a son of a Karian mother and an Egyptian father who bore
both an Egyptian and a Karian name. It is an interesting proof of the
readiness of some at least among the natives of Sais to mingle with the
foreigner, and it shows further that the Karian mercenaries, like the
Greeks, brought their wives and daughters along with them.
Herodotos seems to have been at Sais when the festival of “burning lamps”
was celebrated there. On the night of the festival lamps were lighted
round about the houses in the open air, the lamps being cups filled with
salt and oil, on the surface of which a wick floated. All who could
thronged to Sais to take part in the ceremonies; those who could not be
there lighted their lamps at home and so observed the rites due to Neit.
The festival took place in the summer, probably at the time of the summer
solstice, and the illuminations characteristic of it are still perpetuated
in some of the numerous festivals of modern Egypt. The annual festival in
honour of Isis was observed all over Egypt in the same way.
As the Greek traveller approached Memphis the pyramids of Gizeh were shown
to him towering over the water on his right. His visit to them was
reserved to another day, and he continued to sail on to the ancient
capital of the country. Memphis was still in all its glory. Its lofty
walls of crude brick, painted white, shone in the sun, and its great
temple of Ptah still preserved the monuments and records of the early
dynasties of Egypt. Built on an embankment rescued from the Nile, it was
said, by Menes, the first monarch of the united kingdom, Memphis, though
of no great width, extended along the banks of the river for a distance of
half-a-day’s journey. To the west, in the desert, lay its necropolis, the
city of the dead, reaching from Abu Roâsh on the north to Dahshûr on the
south. On the opposite side of the Nile, a little to the north, was the
fortress of Khri-Ahu, which guarded the approach to the river. Where Cairo
now stands Herodotos saw only sand and water. Even Khri-Ahu was merely an
insignificant village at the foot of a fortress of mud brick; the strong
walls and towers of hewn stone in which the Roman legion afterwards kept
ward over Egypt were as yet unbuilt. All who could afford it lived in
Memphis and its suburbs, and the rock-hewn tombs at the foot of the
citadel of modern Cairo are of the Roman age.
From Memphis to Heliopolis was rather more than twenty miles, or a
morning’s row on the river. Herodotos, therefore, after having been told
at Memphis of the experiment made by Psammetikhos to discover the origin
of language, speaks of having “turned into” Heliopolis in order to make
further inquiries about the matter, “for the Heliopolitans are said to be
the best informed of the Egyptians.” We may gather from his words that he
made an excursion to Heliopolis while he was staying in Memphis. But he
would have passed it again on his homeward voyage.
The site of Heliopolis is well-known to every tourist who has been to
Cairo. The drive to the garden and ostrich-farm of Matarîyeh and the
obelisk of Usertesen I. is a pleasant way of filling up an afternoon. But
of the ancient city of Heliopolis or On, with its famous temple of Ra, the
Sun-god, its university of learned priests, and its innumerable monuments
of the past, there is little now to be seen. The obelisk reared in front
of its temple a thousand years before Joseph married the daughter of its
high-priest still stands where it stood in his day; but the temple has
vanished utterly. So, too, has the sister obelisk which was erected by its
side, and of which Arabic historians still have something to say. Nothing
is left but the mud-brick wall of the sacred enclosure, and a thick layer
of lime-stone chippings which tell how the last relics of the temple of
the Sun-god were burnt into lime for the Cairo of Ismail Pasha. One or two
fragments were rescued from destruction by Dr. Grant Bey, the most
noticeable of which is a portion of a cornice, originally 30 feet 4 inches
in length, which had been erected by Nektanebo II., the last of the native
Pharaohs. Blocks with the names of the second and third Ramses are also
lying near the western gate of the enclosure, and in the eastern desert
are the tombs of the dead. Nothing more remains of the old capital of
Egyptian religion and learning. The destruction is indeed complete; the
spoiler whom Jeremiah saw in prophetic vision has broken “the images of
Beth-Shemesh,” and burnt with fire “the houses of the gods of the
Egyptians.” If we would see the obelisks and images of On we must now go
to the cities and museums of Europe or America. It was from Heliopolis
that the huge scarab of stone now in the British Museum was originally
brought to Alexandria, and at Heliopolis Cleopatra’s Needle was first set
up by Thothmes III. in front of the temple of Amon.
Heliopolis was the centre and source of the worship of the Sun-god in
ancient Egypt, in so far, at all events, as he was adored under the name
of Ra. The worship goes back to prehistoric days. Menes was already a “son
of Ra,” inheriting his right to rule from the Sun-god of On. The theology
of Heliopolis is incorporated in the earliest chapters of the Book of the
Dead, that Ritual of the Departed, a knowledge of which ensured the safe
passage of the dead man into the world to come. It was in the great hall
of its first temple that Egyptian mythology believed Horus to have been
cured of his wounds after the battle with Set. The origin of the temple,
in fact, like the origin of the school of priests which gathered round it,
was too far lost in the mists of antiquity for authentic history to
remember.
As befitted its theological character, Heliopolis was rich in sacred
animals. The bull Mnêvis, in which the Sun-god was incarnated, was a rival
of the bull Apis of Memphis, the incarnation of Ptah. The two bulls point
to a community of worship between the two localities in that primeval age
when neither Ra of Heliopolis nor Ptah of Memphis was known, and when the
primitive Egyptian population—whoever they may have been—were plunged in
the grossest superstitions of African fetichism. Herodotos did not hear of
the bull Mnêvis. But he was acquainted with the story of another sacred
animal of Heliopolis, the _bennu_ or Phœnix, the sacred bird of Ra.
Indeed, the fame of the phœnix had long before penetrated to Greece.
Hesiod alludes to it, and the account of the marvellous bird given by
Herodotos was “stolen,” we are told by Porphyry, from his predecessor
Hekatæos. Hekatæos says that it was like an eagle, whereas the monuments
show that it was a heron, and Herodotos follows him in the blunder. We may
argue from this, as Professor Wiedemann does, that Herodotos himself never
saw its picture. But otherwise his account is correct. Its wings were red
and gold, and it represented the solar cycle of five hundred years.
When Strabo visited Heliopolis in the age of Augustus he found it already
half deserted. Its schools and library had been superseded by those of
Alexandria, and although the houses in which the priestly philosophers had
once lived were still standing, they were now empty. Among them was the
house in which Plato and Eudoxos had studied not long after the time when
Herodotos was there. In spite, therefore, of the Persian wars Herodotos
must have found the ancient university still famous and flourishing. Just
as in the Cairo of to-day the whole circle of Mohammedan science is taught
in the University of El-Azhar on the basis of the Qorân, so in the
Heliopolis which Herodotos visited all the circle of Egyptian knowledge
was still taught and learned on the basis of the doctrines of the
Heliopolitan school. The feelings with which the Greek traveller viewed
the professors and their pupils—if, indeed, he was allowed to do so—must
have been similar to those with which an English tourist now passes
through the Azhar mosque.
From Heliopolis Herodotos continued his voyage down the Pelusiac arm of
the Nile to Bubastis, thus following nearly the same line of travel as the
modern tourist who goes by train from Cairo to Zagazig. The rubbish heaps
of Tel Basta, just beyond the station of Zagazig, mark the site of
Bubastis, called Pi-beseth in the Old Testament (Ezek. xxx. 17), Pi-Bast,
“the Temple of Bast,” by the Egyptians. The cat-headed goddess Bast
presided over the fortunes of the nome and city, where she was identified
with Sekhet, the lion-headed goddess of Memphis. But the cat and the lion
never lay down in peace together. As a hieroglyphic text at Philæ puts it,
Sekhet was cruel and Bast was kindly.
The exclusive worship of Bast at Bubastis, however, dated from the time of
Osorkon II. of the twenty-second dynasty, as Dr. Naville’s excavations
have made plain. Before that period other deities, more especially Butô
and Amon-Ra, reigned there. Bast, in fact, was of foreign origin. She was
the feminine form of Bes, the warrior god who came from the coasts of
Arabia, and her association with the cat perhaps originated far away in
the south.
The description given by Herodotos of Bubastis and its festival is clearly
that of an eye-witness. He tells us how the temple stands in the middle of
the town surrounded by a canal which is shaded with trees, and how the
visitor looks down upon it from the streets of the city, which had grown
in height while the level of the temple had remained unaltered. He tells
us further how a broad street runs from it to the market-place, and thence
to a chapel dedicated to Hermês, and how at the great annual festival
crowds of men and women flocked to it in boats, piping and singing,
clapping the hands and dancing, offering sacrifices when they arrived at
the shrine, and drinking wine to excess. A similar sight can be seen even
now in the month of August at Tantah, where the religious fair is thronged
by men and women indulging in all the amusements recounted by the old
Greek traveller, sometimes beyond the verge of decency. Wine alone is
absent from the modern feast, its place being taken by _hashish_ and
_raki_.
As the festival was held in honour of Bast, it was probably an annual
commemoration of the great “Shed-festival” of thirty years celebrated by
Osorkon II. in his twenty-second year, and depicted on the walls of the
hall which Dr. Naville has discovered. The “Shed-festival” took place
during the month of August—in the time of the sixth dynasty on the 27th of
Epiphi. It was probably, therefore, at the end of August or the beginning
of September that Herodotos found himself in the city of Bast.
The description Herodotos gives of the position of the temple is still
true to-day. The temple, which he pronounced to be the prettiest in Egypt,
is now in ruins, like the houses and streets that encircled it. But the
visitor to Tel-Bast still looks down upon its site from the rubbish-mounds
of the ruined habitations, and can still trace the beds of the canals
which were carried round it. Even the street which led to the market-place
is still visible, and Dr. Naville has found the remains of the little
temple which Herodotos supposed to be that of Hermês, the Egyptian Thoth.
In this, however, he was wrong. Like the larger edifice, it was dedicated
to Bast, and seems to have been used as a treasury. It was, therefore,
under the protection of Thoth, whose figure decorated its walls, and Dr.
Naville is doubtless right in believing that this has led to the mistake
of Herodotos or his guides. Osorkon I. consecrated in it large quantities
of precious things, including about £130,300 in gold and £13,000 in
silver—an evident proof that the internal condition of his kingdom was
flourishing.
Dr. Naville’s excavations were undertaken for the Egypt Exploration Fund
in 1887-89, and were chiefly made among the broken columns and dislocated
stones of the larger temple. They have given us the outlines of its
history. Like most of the great temples of Egypt, its foundation went back
to the very beginning of Egyptian civilisation. The Pharaohs of the Old
Empire repaired or enlarged it, and the names of Kheops and Khephren, as
well as of Pepi I., have been found upon its blocks. The kings of the
twelfth and thirteenth dynasties embellished it, and even the Hyksos
princes did the same. In the days when they had adopted the culture and
customs of Egypt and were holding royal state at Zoan, two of them at
least restored and beautified the temple of Bubastis and called themselves
the sons of Ra. One of them, Apophis, may have been the Apophis whose
demand that the vassal-king of Thebes should worship Sutekh instead of
Amon brought about the war of independence; the other, Khian
User-n-Set-Ra, the Iannas of Manetho, has engraved his name on a colossal
lion which was carried to Babylon by some Chaldæan conqueror.
The monarchs of the eighteenth dynasty continued the pious work of the
Hyksos whom they had expelled. But the civil disturbances which attended
the fall of the dynasty caused injury to the temple, and we find Seti I.
and Ramses II. once more restoring it. The kings of the twentieth dynasty
have also left memorials in it, but it was under the twenty-second
dynasty—the successors of Shishak—that Bubastis reached the highest point
of its prosperity. The princes who followed Shishak made the city their
capital and its temple their royal chapel. The great festival hall was
built by Osorkon II. between the entrance hall and the main court, and the
worship of Bast was exclusively installed in it. Temple and city alike
underwent but little change down to the days of Herodotos. It was after
his visit that the last addition was made to the sacred buildings. With
the recovery of Egyptian independence after the successful revolt from
Persia came a new era of architectural activity, and Nektanebo I., the
first king of the thirtieth dynasty, erected a great hall in the rear of
the shrine. After this the history of the temple fades out of view.
Herodotos was told that the height of the mound on which the city of
Bubastis stood was an indication of the evil deeds of its inhabitants.
Sabako, the Ethiopian conqueror, it was said, had caused the sites of the
Egyptian cities to be raised by convict labour, just as they had been
previously raised by those who cut the canals under Sesostris. But the
whole story was an invention of the dragomen. The disintegration of the
crude brick of which the houses of Egypt are built makes them quickly
decay and give place to other buildings, which are erected on the mound
they have formed. As the city grows in age, so does the _tel_ or mound
whereon it stands grow in height, and had Herodotos travelled in Upper
Egypt he would have seen the process going on under his eyes. In the
Delta, moreover, there was a special cause for the great height of the
city-mounds. The water of the inundation percolated through the ground,
and in order that the lower floor of a house should be dry, it was
necessary to build it on a series of vaults or cellars. A few years ago
these vaults were very visible in some of the old houses of Tel-Bast. They
had no outlet, either by door or window, and were consequently never
employed as store-rooms. Their sole use was to keep the rest of the house
dry.
The cemetery of the sacred cats was on the western side of the town. But
the cats do not appear to have been embalmed, as elsewhere in Egypt; they
were either buried or burned. Among the bones which have been sent to
England naturalists have found none of our modern domestic cat. Several,
however, of the bronze cats of the Ptolemaic age which have been
discovered with the bones unmistakably represent the domestic animal.
Generally they have the small head of the modern Egyptian puss.
“A little below Bubastis” Herodotos passed the deserted “camp” and
fortress of the Ionian and Karian mercenaries of Psammetikhos, and saw the
slips for their vessels and the ruins of their houses still standing on
the shore. Amasis had transferred them to Memphis, in the belief that it
was rather from his Egyptian subjects that he needed protection than from
his neighbours in Asia. The site of the camp was discovered and partially
excavated by Professor Petrie for the Egypt Exploration Fund in 1886, and
one of the results of his discoveries was to show that it was also the
site of the frontier fortress called by the Greeks Daphnæ. What its
Egyptian name was we do not know with certainty, though it is probable
that Professor Petrie is right in holding it to be the Tahpanhes of the
prophet Jeremiah. It is now known as Tel ed-Deffeneh.
The drying up of the Pelusiac arm of the Nile has brought the desolation
of the desert to Tel ed-Deffeneh. The canal which has replaced it is
brackish; Lake Menzaleh, which bounds the Tel to the east, is more
brackish still. The land is impregnated with salt, and covered in places
with drifts of sand. There is no cultivated soil nearer than Salahîyeh,
twelve miles away; no water-way less distant than Kantara on the Suez
Canal.
The greater part of the ancient site lies between Lake Menzaleh on the
east and a swamp out of which the canal flows on the west, and it covers a
large acreage of ground. Northward are the canal, a marsh, and mounds of
sand, and beyond the canal lies the cemetery of the ancient fortress, as
well as a suburb which was probably the Karian quarter. In the centre of
the site rises the Tel proper, a great mound of disintegrated brickwork
called “the palace of the Jew’s daughter.” Excavation soon made it clear
that it represented the fortress of Daphnæ, and that it was built by
Psammetikhos when he settled his Greek garrison there. For a frontier
fortress no place could have been better chosen. It guarded the eastern
branch of the Nile, while from its summit we look across the desert, on
one side along the high-road which once led to Syria, and on the other as
far as the mounds of Tanis. The fort itself has crumbled into dust, but
the vaulted chambers on which it was erected still exist, as well as the
“pavement” at its entrance.
The pottery found at Tel ed-Deffeneh is early Greek, but of a different
type from that of Naukratis. Like the latter, it would seem to have been
manufactured on the spot and exported from thence to all parts of the
Greek world. Jewellery, too, appears to have been made there by the Greek
or Karian artisans who lived under the protection of their military
kinsmen. But the manufacture of both pottery and jewellery came to a
sudden end. When Amasis removed the mercenaries to Memphis in the middle
of the sixth century before Christ the civilian population departed with
them. Between that date and a new and unimportant settlement in the
Ptolemaic period the site seems to have been deserted. When Herodotos
passed it by, it had no inhabitants.
From Daphnæ to Pelusium the voyage was short. Pelusium, once the key of
Egypt, has shared the fate of Daphnæ. The channel of the river that flowed
by it has become a dreary reach of black salt mud, and the fields which
once supplied the city with food are wastes of sterile soil or mountains
of yellow sand. Not even a solitary Bedouin disturbs the solitude of the
spot at most seasons of the year. All that reminds the traveller of human
life as he encamps on the edge of the sand-dunes is the electric light
which flashes through the night from Port Said far away on the horizon.
In the midst of the desolate waste of poisonous mud rise the two large
mounds which alone are left of Pelusium. On the larger of these, to the
westward, lie the granite columns and other relics of the Roman temple,
beneath which, and below the present level of the water, are the ruins of
the temple of the Pharaonic age. The ground is strewn with broken glass
and pottery, some Roman, some Saracenic.
The Egyptian name of Pelusium is still unknown, and before we can discover
it excavations upon its site will be necessary. Ezekiel calls it Sin (xxx.
15, 16)—at least, if the commentators are to be trusted—and when the
Greeks sought an etymology for the name they gave it in their own word for
“mud.” But it was a famous spot in the records of Egyptian history.
Avaris, the Hyksos stronghold, must have been in its neighbourhood, and it
was outside its walls that the Persian conquest of Egypt was decided. The
battle-field where the army of Kambyses, led by the Greek deserter Phanês,
overthrew the Greek mercenaries of the Pharaoh, was near enough for
Herodotos to walk over it and compare the skulls of the Egyptian and
Persian combatants, as he had already done at Paprêmis. Here, too, he was
shown the spot where the Greek and Karian soldiers of Psammetikhos III.
had slaughtered the sons of Phanês over a huge bowl in the sight of their
father, and after mixing the blood of the boys with wine and water, had
savagely drunk it and then rushed to the battle.
Not far from Pelusium another tragedy took place four centuries after
Herodotos had been there. The fugitive Pompey was welcomed to the shore by
Septimius, the general of the Roman forces in Egypt, and Akhillas, the
commander of the Egyptian army, and murdered by them as he touched the
land. Akhillas then hastened to Alexandria, to besiege Cæsar in the royal
palace, and the burning of the great library was the atonement for
Pompey’s death.
Down even to the middle ages Pelusium was still the seaport of the eastern
Delta. It held the place now occupied by Port Said. It was from its quays
that the vessels started for the Syrian coast. In one that was bound for
Tyre, Herodotos took his passage and ended his Egyptian tour.
But he had visited certain cities in the Delta into which we have been
unable to follow him, owing to the uncertainty that still hangs over their
exact position. Besides the places already described, we know that he saw
Butô, which is coupled with Khemmis, as well as Paprêmis and Prosôpitis,
and probably also Busiris.
Khemmis—which must be carefully distinguished from the other Khemmis, the
modern Ekhmîm—was, he tells us, a floating island “in a deep broad lake by
the side of the temple at Butô,” where Lêtô, the Egyptian Uaz, was
worshipped. Brugsch identifies this island of Khemmis with the town and
marshes of Kheb, where the young Horus was hidden by his mother Isis out
of the reach of Set. Kheb was in the nome called that of Menelaos by the
Greeks, the capital of which seems to have been Pa-Uaz, “the temple of
Uaz,” transformed by Greek tongues into Butô, and of which another city
was Kanôpos. Butô, or at least the twin-city where the great temple of the
goddess stood, is probably now represented by Tel Fera’în, not far to the
west of Fuah, at the extremity of the Mahmudîyeh canal. It was thus within
easy distance of Kanôpos on the one side and of Sais on the other, and
Herodotos might have visited it from either one of them.
But after all it is not certain that he did so. Butô is mentioned again by
him in a passage which shows that it could not have been Pa-Uaz, but must
have rather lain on the eastern side of the Delta, in the land of Goshen,
where the desert adjoined the “Arabian nome.” It is where he tells us
about “the winged serpents” which fly in the spring-time from Arabia to
Egypt, on the confines of which they are met and slain by the sacred
ibises. Anxious to learn something about them, he visited the spot where
the yearly encounter took place, and there saw the ground strewn with the
bones and spines of the slaughtered snakes. This spot, he further informs
us, is in the Arabian desert, where it borders on “the Egyptian plain,”
“hard by the city of Buto.”
Thanks to the excavations made by Mr. Griffith for the Egypt Exploration
Fund at Tel en-Nebêsheh, near Salahîyeh, we now know where this eastern
city of Buto stood. Its Egyptian name was Am, and it was the capital of
the nineteenth nome of Am-pehu, but it was consecrated to the worship of
the goddess Uaz, who was symbolised by a winged snake. The great temple of
the goddess was built on the western side of the town, and the Pharaohs of
the twelfth dynasty, as well as Ramses II. and his successors, and the
Saites of the twenty-sixth dynasty, had all helped to endow and embellish
it. When the Greek garrison was established in the neighbourhood at
Daphnæ, a colony of Cyprian potters settled at Am. But in the age of the
Ptolemies it fell into decay, and by the beginning of the Roman era its
magnificence belonged to the past.
Just beyond the precincts of the town was the Arabian desert, the realm of
Set. The legend of Isis and Horus was accordingly transferred to it, and
its patron goddess became Uaz of Butô, who, under the form of Isis,
concealed Horus in its marshes. Was it here, therefore, in the Pa-Uaz of
Am, that the Butô of Herodotos has to be looked for, rather than in the
Menelaite nome?
We know that he must have passed the city of Am on his way from Bubastis
to Daphnæ, and his expedition to the desert in search of the winged
serpents shows that he stopped there. On the other hand, his account of
the floating island of Khemmis was derived from his predecessor Hekatæos,
and when he states that the Butô with which it was connected was built on
the Sebennytic branch of the Nile, “as one sails up it from the sea,” it
would seem certain that his account of this Butô was also quoted from the
older writer. And yet it is difficult to believe that his description of
the monolithic shrine which stood there is not given at first-hand.
Perhaps the best explanation would be that Herodotos really made an
excursion to the city, but has so skilfully mingled what he himself saw
there with the description of Hekatæos as to make it impossible to
separate the two.
The site of Paprêmis is absolutely unknown, and we have no clue even to
its relative position. But Prosôpitis may be the fourth nome, Sapi-ris or
“Sapi of the south.” In Byzantine times its capital bore the name of
Nikiu, which Champollion long ago identified with the Coptic Pshati and
the modern Abshadi, not far from Menûf. Menûf stands in a straight line
due westward of Benha, and would have lain directly in the path of the
traveller on his way from Naukratis to Memphis.
It was in the island of Prosôpitis that the Athenian fleet was blockaded
by the Persians under Megabazus, and captured only when the river was
turned into another channel, after the blockade had lasted for a year and
a half. Immediately westward of Menûf, in fact, an island is formed by the
Rosetta and Damietta branches of the Nile which unite at the southern end
of it, and are joined together towards the north by the Bahr
el-Fara’-unîyeh. But the island is twenty-seven miles long by fifteen
wide, and it is difficult to understand how this could have been blockaded
by the Persian army, much less defended by the crews of seventy vessels,
for the space of a year and a half. Herodotos indeed asserts that the
island of Prosôpitis was nine skhœnœ, or about sixty miles in
circumference, and that it contained many cities; but this only makes the
difficulty the greater.
Lastly, we come to Busiris, which is described by the Greek traveller as
“in the centre of the Delta.” This description exactly suits the position
of Pa-Usar or Busiris, “the temple of Osiris, the lord of Mendes,” and the
capital of the Busirite nome. Its modern representative is Abusir, a
little to the south of Semennûd or Sebennytos, on the railway line from
Tanta to Mansûrah. If Herodotos really visited this place, he must have
done so from Sais, to the west of which it lies in a pretty direct line.
But the distance was considerable, and there is nothing in the language he
uses in regard to it which obliges us to believe that he was really there.
His description of the festival held there in honour of Isis is not that
of an eye-witness; indeed, the remark he adds to it that “all the Karians
who live in Egypt slash themselves on the forehead with swords” in their
religious exercises goes to show that it could not have been so. All he
knows about the festival is that, after sacrificing, men and women strike
themselves in honour of Osiris. The Karians, however, who cut their heads
like the Persian devotees of Huseyn in modern Cairo, were not Egyptians,
and therefore would not have been allowed to join in the mysteries of the
worship of Osiris; moreover, they did not live in Busiris, but in the
Karian quarter of Memphis. What Herodotos tells us about them plainly
comes from his Karian dragoman, and refers to some native Karian festival.
There was more than one Pa-Usar or Temple of Osiris in Lower Egypt. Next
to that in the Busirite nome, the most famous was that of the Ur-Mer or
the bull Mnêvis, in the environs of Heliopolis. This latter Herodotos
would have seen when he paid his visit to the city of the Sun-god, and
this too was near Memphis, where the Karians lived.
There was yet another Busiris a little to the north of Memphis itself.
According to Pliny, its inhabitants made their living by climbing the
pyramids for the amusement of strangers, like the Bedouin of Gizeh to-day.
Its name has been preserved in the village and pyramids of Abusir. But
neither the Busiris of Memphis nor the Busiris of Heliopolis was “in the
centre of the Delta,” and it would seem that in this instance also
Herodotos is either quoting from other travellers or is mixing their
experiences with his own. With the Busiris of Memphis and the Busiris of
Heliopolis he was doubtless acquainted: with the Busiris of the middle
Delta we must conclude he was not. Hence his scanty notice of the festival
that was celebrated there; hence also his reference to the Karian settlers
in Memphis and their religious ceremonies. We must remember that Herodotos
was not the first Greek tourist in Egypt, and that he too had his _Murray_
and his _Baedeker_ like the tourist of to-day.