Rev. Edward Hincks on the Egyptian Stele, or Tablet. 07 



" the adorer of the sun's disk."* The latter name is found at Karnac, cut over 

 the former, the praenomen attached to it remaining unchanged. Not content 

 with this, in the fervour of his religious zeal, he made war against the name of 

 Amenothph, wherever he found it. It has been defaced in innumerable instan- 

 ces in the second cartouche of his grandfather (or perhaps his great grandfather), 

 Amenothph III. In general, the name has been merely chiselled away ; but in 

 several places, a repetition of the praenomen has been cut over it ; a plain proof 

 that his hostility was not directed against his ancestor, but against the name 

 which he bore. There is also a tablet of Mr. Harris's of the age of Thothmos 

 IV. (already referred to in this paper), relating to a deceased Amenothph, the 

 former part of whose name has been rudely defaced in every one of the four 

 places where it occurs. A like hostility appears to have been directed against 

 the goddess Mouth, the wife of Amoun. In a curious statue of the reign of 

 queen Amuneth, in the collection of Sign. Athanasi, representing (as I conceive) 

 this queen, when an infant, in the arms of her nurse, and commemorating the 

 father of the nurse, whose name was Sen- Mouth ; the latter part of this name, 

 which occurs very frequently in the inscriptions, has been, in the majority of 

 instances, more or less defaced. This statue is curious, not only on account of 

 its subject, but on account of its exhibiting traces of two defacers ; a political 

 one, who obliterated the name of the queen on the accession of her brother; and 

 a religious one, at a later period, who made war on the name of the goddess. I 

 mention these facts, because they are not unconnected with the subject of the 

 present paper ; they furnish a criterion of the age of a tablet which may some- 

 times be applicable. If the name of Amoun, or Mouth, appears on a tablet with 

 marks of a hostile tool, it may be considered as certain that it was anterior to the 

 reign of Rameses I., perhaps to that of Horus ; and as highly probable that it was 

 not very long anterior to it. Very ancient tablets, which are now in existence, 

 were in all probability buried in the days of the sun-worshipper. 



* In an article in the Foreign Quarterly Review, which has appeared while these sheets were 

 passing through the press, this king is called Oubasheniten, which is interpreted "the splendour of 

 the disk." The Coptic word oubash, splendour, is in Egyption 2723?, and can have no connexion 

 with nS; the Coptic corruption of the latter might be bash or ouash, but it certainly could not be 

 oubash. It has been demonstrated by Salvolini that this root signifies " to adore." Ouasht has 

 this signification in Coptic, iu which language a T is often paragogic. 



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