name Psampolis, which in old Greek times travellers gave to this wonderful place; that is, the city (óns) of Psam. This last designation, again, came from the old Egyptian name of the place, Pimases or Pimas, Pimsa, from which the Greeks formed the more euphonious name of Psampolis. PLAN AND SECTION OF THE GREAT TEMPLE OF ABOU SIMBEL A, Entrance. B, Great Hall, supported by eight Osirid columns. c, Second hall, supported by four square columns, with religious subjects on the walls. D, Third hall, with similar subjects. E, Sanctuary, with an altar in the middle, and at the end four seated figures of Ptah, Amon, Horus, and Ramses himself. We must refrain from entering the temple, to admire the wall-pictures in the freshest colours, and to see here the Khita, there the Libyans, here the Mr. Villiers Stuart (Nile Gleanings, p. 169) on a newly cleared corner of the temple-frescoes in the form Abbou: an other example of coincidence in form between Egyptian and Semitic words, which has been converted into a new meaning. In hieroglyphic texts, also, the place is called Abushak and Abshak. (Wilkinson, Ancient Egyptians, vol. iii. p. 116, 2nd edit.)—ED. Negroes, there the Phoenicians, falling beneath the sword of Ramessu 'the god.' We must deny ourselves the pleasure of passing through the halls of the gods, and reading the inscriptions on the walls and pillars, and on the enormous memorial tablets. After long wanderings, we step out of the darkness of the primeval cave back into the bright light of day, silent, our thoughts turned within, confounded and almost overpowered by the indescribable impression of our own helplessness. We have experienced, in the gigantic tomb of a time long passed away, some portion of that nameless feeling, which moved our forefathers of old in their inmost being, at the sight of the most sublime of all dwellings made for the gods, the wonderful rock-temple of Ibsamboul. Who was the architect?-who conceived the thought?—who laid down the plan?—who carried it out? who were the artists that executed these gigantic works?-on such questions history keeps a deep silence. But whoever the forgotten author of this building may have been, he was a man full of enthusiasm, whose heart guided his hand, who sought not vain Mammon as his reward, but the eternal duration of his immortal and incomparable work. Although Ramses raised his monuments in Thebes, and went up to the old capital of the empire to celebrate the festival of Amon ;-though he held public courts in Memphis, to take counsel about the goldfields in the Nubian country;-though he visited Abydus, to see the tombs of the kings and the temple of the dead built by his father;-not to mention Heliopolis, in which he dedicated a temple and obelisks to the sun-god; 9—yet neither these nor other cities formed his permanent abode. On the eastern frontier of Egypt, in the low-lands of the Delta, in Zoan-Tanis, was the proper royal residence of this Pharaoh.1 We have often mentioned this city, and have come to understand its important position. Connected with the sea by its situation on the then broad and navigable Tanitic arm of the Nile, and commanding also the entrance of the great road, covered by 'Khetams,' or fortresses, which led to Palestine either in a northeasterly direction through Pelusium, or in an easterly direction through Migdol, on the royal road, ZoanTanis was, in the proper sense of the word, the key of Egypt. Impressed with the importance of the position of this great city,' Ramessu transferred his court to Zoan, strengthened its fortifications, and founded a new temple-city, the holy places of which were dedicated to the great gods of the country, Amon, Ptah, and Hormakhu, with whom as a fourth he associated the foreign Baal-Sutekh. With the newly established 6 9 We obtain precise information on the name of the Ramesseum of Heliopolis, and on the person of its architect, from two inscriptions in the quarry to the north of the second pyramid of Gizeh, that of king Khafra. The smaller inscription runs, 'The architect of the city of the Sun (Pira), Mai:' the greater one, 'The architect of the beautiful temple of Ramessu Miamun in the great temple of the Ancient one (a surname of the sun-god Ra), Mai, a son of the architect Bok-en-amon of Thebes.' Below these, in like manner the sculptor from the life, Pa-uër, has immortalized himself. Mai, the son of Bok-en-amon, certainly belonged to that great family of architects, whose genealogy we shall hereafter lay before our readers. (The Table referred to is given below, Chap. XIX.) 1 Compare Vol. I. pp. 160, 230, and the Discourse on the Exodus. (See Index, s. v. 'Zoan.')-ED. divinities the king himself was united both by his effigy and his names, and there appeared in due order an Amon of Ramessu, a Ptah, a Hormakhu, and finally a Sutekh, of the same Pharaoh. The new temple-city had a superabundance of statues and obelisks, memorial stones, and other works. The most wonderful memorial must ever continue to be the stone, which has already been mentioned, with the date of the year 400 of king Nub. The inscription upon it, so far as it belongs to the historical scope of this work, has been translated, and its important bearing alike on Egyptian and Biblical chronology discussed, in the chapter on the Shepherd Kings. The plain covered with the ruins resembles a vast charnel-house, on which the dead remnants of stones, memorials of Ramses the Great, lie scattered broadcast, broken and worn, like the mouldering bones of generations slain long ago. From several inscriptions (not less than a dozen) on the obelisks and fragments of ruins at Tanis, we derive incidentally much important information of an historical and mythological characOne of these describes the king as ter. 'Warrior (mohar) of the goddess Antha (Anaïtis), Another calls him the bull in the land of Ruten' (sic); another again boasts of him, that he has made a great slaughter among the Shasu Arabs. Inscriptions on pillars say that he has prepared festivals for 2 See Vol. I. pp. 296-7. We have transferred the translation, which Dr. Brugsch gives here, to the place where it seems much more appropriate.—ED. name Psampolis, which in old Greek times travellers gave to this wonderful place; that is, the city (TÓNIS) (πόλις) of Psam. This last designation, again, came from the old Egyptian name of the place, Pimases or Pimas, Pimsa, from which the Greeks formed the more euphonious name of Psampolis. PLAN AND SECTION OF THE GREAT TEMPLE OF ABOU SIMBEL. A, Entrance. B, Great Hall, supported by eight Osirid columns. c, Second hall, supported by four square columns, with religious subjects on the walls. D, Third hall, with similar subjects. E, Sanctuary, with an altar in the middle, and at the end four seated figures of Ptah, Amon, Horus, and Ramses himself. We must refrain from entering the temple, to admire the wall-pictures in the freshest colours, and to see here the Khita, there the Libyans, here the Mr. Villiers Stuart (Nile Gleanings, p. 169) on a newly cleared corner of the temple-frescoes in the form Abbou: an other example of coincidence in form between Egyptian and Semitic words, which has been converted into a new meaning. In hieroglyphic texts, also, the place is called Abushak and Abshak. (Wilkinson, Ancient Egyptians, vol. iii. p. 116, 2nd edit)-ED. |