lesley.] ^r.A [1868. 



our scribe Annana's princely pnpil, did the same for both the 

 figure and name of Amun. He records the fact himself on one 

 of the faces of the great obelisk at Karnac. And yet, while thus 

 showing his attachment to the Theban and Memphite Pantheon, 

 he followed his father's example, in various politic concessions 

 and indulgencies to the worship of the god popular among the 

 Hyksos of the Delta. 



Recent discoveries show that different Rameside monarchs of 

 the XIX. and XXth dynasties erected temples to the Sun-god 

 of Syria, and set up their own statues in such temples, in order 

 to keep the foreign element of the Delta quiet ; while they con- 

 ciliated the upcountry people, the Copts of Memphis, Abydos, 

 and Thebes, b}^ preserving the worship of Ptah, Amun, Thoth, 

 &c., as the State religion. And no doubt this policy was pur- 

 sued b3^the Pharaohs of subsequent dynasties, until the XXTIth, 

 when Psammetichus, having his capital on the shore of the 

 Delta and sympathising more therefore with Greece and Phoeni- 

 cia than with Ethiopia, stamped out the last embers of southern 

 Amun worship and Egyptian patriotism together by destrojing 

 Thebes, in fact leaving very little for the mithraic sun-wor- 

 shipping Persians under Cambyses to do in that line. It was 

 the cue for the Greek historians to hold up the ruins of the Xile- 

 valley as proofs of the barbarism of the Persians. But we now 

 know that Cambyses and Darius illustrated the temples of Egyp- 

 tian deities precisely as did the Ramesides, and were probably 

 influenced to do so b}^ a similar State polic3^ That Carnak 

 and Luxor and Quornah and Medinet Abu are dreadful and 

 pitiable ruins, we are to thank the Greek mercenaries of the 

 L3'bian Psammetichus, whose armj' must have been composed of 

 just such ruffians from the northern shores of the Mediterranean 

 as now habitually rob and assassinate, and almost without in- 

 terference, in the modern city of Alexandria. 



There seems to have existed an eternal feud between the pop- 

 ulation of the Delta and the inhabitants of the proper Valley 

 of the Xile extending frcm the Pyramids six luuidred miles 

 southward to the Cataract. Set or Sute/, if not the most ancient 

 god of the Delta, was as old as Osiris, and always plainly opposed 

 to that God of Eg_ypt proper ; quite as much as Aten was after- 

 wards to Amun-Ra. Under the Second Empire (XI, XII d.) the 

 hawk and the cock-eared jackal, Ilorus and Seth, represented 

 on the banners of the Pharaohs Upper and Lower Egypt. 



