ARCHAEOLOGY. (EGYPTIAN.) 



19 



size of a coffin, sometimes in two rows, one 

 above the other. Nearly all the tombs had 

 heen rifled in ancient times. They were re- 

 garded as certainly Greek and Roman, and the 

 corpses had not been mummified. Some of 

 the names on the tombs were apparently He- 

 brew. Such were Nethaneus, Eleazar ( f Ac A 

 ZAPe), Barchias (BAPXIA2 BAPXIOY), and 

 others which might be Greek or Jewish. 

 Thus, out of a small number of tablets discov- 

 ered, one half contain names which are de- 

 cidedly Jewish ; and M. Naville " can not help 

 concluding that the tradition which makes 

 Tell el Yehoodieh a Jewish settlement rests on 

 an historic basis." Further in the desert was 

 another necropolis, containing a great number 

 of torra-cotta coffins, generally hidden in brick 

 chambers. They had nearly all been rifled. 

 The coffins had urns placed at the head and 

 feet. They were painted with Egyptian pat- 

 terns and hieroglyphics in imitation of the 

 Egyptian style, but in designs which appeared 

 to have no other meaning. M. Naville was not 

 able to agree with Brugsch's supposition that 

 the city was the city of Heliopolis, rebuilt after 

 the Hyksos invasion, but came to the conclusion 

 that it was of more recent origin, and did not 

 come into importance till under the Ptolemaic 

 rulers ; that the site was probably that of the 

 city given to the Israelites by Ptolemy Philo- 

 pater. Mr. F. Llewellen Griffith made more 

 extensive examinations of the further ceme- 

 tery, from which he qualifiedly ascribed the 

 graves to the period of the Ramesside dy- 

 nasties. So far as the relics the statues, the 

 porcelain images of cats and of Bast, porce- 

 lain lion-amulets, scarabei, and fragments of 

 pottery of twelfth and thirteenth dynasty types, 

 and a single inscription on a granite altar of 

 Thoth-Uper Se-Bast Mer-Amen, a hitherto un- 

 known king, probably of the twenty-second dy- 

 nasty throw any light on the history of the old 

 city, it appears to have been as ancient as the 

 time of the thirteenth dynasty ; to have been em- 

 bellished by Rameses II and Meneptah ; to have 

 received additions to the temple under Ra- 

 meses III, and to have been still a flourishing 

 city when Bast was worshiped under the Bu- 

 bastic kings, or in the tenth century B. o. But 

 in the time of Ptolemy Philopater it had long 

 heen deserted, and given up, according to Jo- 

 sephus, to the " sacred animals," or cats. 



A few miles from this place, at Tukh-el-Kar- 

 mus, M. Naville and Mr. Griffith explored a 

 singular group of buildings surrounded by a 

 wall measuring about a mile each way, with a 

 smaller inclosure containing the sites of two 

 temples, of all of which only two foundations 

 conld be traced. Rich collections of small ob- 

 jects, including some Phoenician figures, were 

 found in a part of the excavations, with a 

 plaque hearing the prenomen of Philip Arid- 

 eus B. c. 323 to 317. 



The Great Temple of Bnbastis. The attention 

 of M. Edouard Naville was drawn to Tel Basta, 

 the site of the ancient Bubastis, by the thought 



that no remains of the eighteenth dynasty had 

 yet been found in the Delta. It having been 

 reported during the winter that some tombs 

 had been opened at this place, in which scarabs 

 were found bearing the name of Amenhotep 

 III, he visited the place in April, in hopes that 

 he might find other monuments of that king's 

 dynasty, " more conclusive than scarabs." The 

 site is about half a mile from the station of 

 Zagazig, on the railroad between Cairo and 

 Ismailia, but although it marked the position of 

 one of the finest of the ancient Egyptian cities 

 the Bubastis of the Greeks, the Pi Beseth of 

 the Bible, and the Pi Bast of the Egyptians, the 

 seat of the worship of the goddess Pasht and 

 her sacred animal the cat it was regarded as 

 a place from which all things of interest had 

 disappeared. M. Naville found that the ru- 

 mors about the tombs were false; but a few of 

 the scarabs mentioned had been found at the 

 Tell. He, however, decided to sink some pits 

 in the bed of the great central depression which 

 marks the area of the ancient temple. The 

 topography of the depression, surrounded by 

 high banks of rubbish on all sides, corresponds 

 almost exactly with the description given by 

 Herodotus ( book ii, chap, cxxviii) of a temple 

 which was looked down upon by the encircling 

 buildings that stood upon the embankments 

 high above it. The results of the excavations 

 were unexpectedly satisfactory, and encouraged 

 an active prosecution of operations as long as 

 the season would permit. The plan of the 

 temple was uncovered in three different parts, 

 to which M. Naville gave the names of the 

 Festive Hall, the Hypostyle Hall, and the Ptole- 

 maic Hall. The general effect was to remind 

 him of the great Temple of San. The Festive 

 Hall, a large building without columns, was 

 ''peopled by a crowd of statues in red and 

 black granite," all of which hore the name of 

 Rameses II, but many of which were probably 

 usurped by that king. In this hall were also 

 found a standing statue of a governor of Ethio- 

 pia ; a limestone group of a priest and priestess of 

 the twenty-sixth dynasty, engraved with an in- 

 teresting geographical inscription ; a small statiie 

 with the name of Achoris, of the twenty-ninth 

 dynasty, whose monuments are very rare ; and 

 a squatting statue in black granite of a son of 

 Rameses II, wearing the side-lock of youth, 

 which was evidently usurped from the work of 

 an earlier (the thirteenth) dynasty. The most 

 interesting objects were a large number of 

 sculptured blocks, which once constituted a 

 single tableau, representing a great festival of 

 King Osorkon II, of the twenty-second dynasty. 

 Though they are in confusion, it is possible to 

 gather some outline of the design. It pictured 

 processions of priests bearing standards and of- 

 ferings ; other priests, two and two, carrying 

 shrines and sacred boats, supported by long 

 poles upon their shoulders; frequently repeated 

 representations of Osorkon wearing sometimes 

 the crown of Upper, sometimes of Lower 

 Egypt, generally with the cat-headed goddess 



