AECH^OLOGY. (EGYPTIAN.) 



LOTUS COLUMNS, GREAT TEMPLE OF BUBASTIS. 



Pasht by his side ; sometimes offering incense 

 and libations to various gods, or himself wor- 

 shiped by the priests ; sometimes in company 

 with his queen, Karoama; and religious dances 

 executed by the priests, some of whom make 

 fantastic gestures, while others lie flat on the 

 ground. A fragment of an inscription makes 

 record of a festival which took place every fifty 

 years. The entire hall was constructed of red 

 granite, with the sculptured surfaces unpol- 

 ished. A stone was found bearing an inscrip- 

 tion with the cartouch of Pepi I, of the sixth 

 dynasty, the reputed founder of the Temple of 

 Denderah. The " Hypostyle Hall" contained 

 a colonnade, which is declared to justify the 

 judgment of Herodotus in saying that the Tem- 

 ple of Bubastis was one of the finest in Egypt. 

 It consisted of magnificent monolithic columns 

 in red granite, with capitals in the form of 

 lotus-buds, or palm-leaves, or the head of Ha- 

 thor, with two long locks. Though they bore 

 the name of Barneses II, or of Osorkon II, they 

 were evidently of an older dynasty, and were 

 attributed to the twelfth dynasty ; and a stone 

 was found which bore the name of Usertesen 

 III, of this dynasty. In the western extremity 



of the pile, behind the sanctuary, in what M. 

 Naville calls the Ptolemaic Hall, occurs the 

 name of Nekhthorheb, or Nectanebo I, of the 

 thirtieth dynasty, as the author of additions. 

 The history of the temple is thus written by in- 

 tervals for a period, according to Brugsch's 

 chronology, of about 3,200 years, or from the 

 sixth to the thirtieth dynasty. On this point 

 M. Naville remarks that it is a singular fact 

 that " at Bnbastis, as at Tanis, we find traces 

 first of the sixth dynasty, then of the twelfth 

 dynasty, and then occurs a gap which carries 

 us down to the nineteenth dynasty. No name 

 belonging to the eighteenth dynasty has yet 

 appeared, though some may yet be discovered. 

 Scarabs, bearing the name of Amenhotep III, 

 have, it is true, been found from time to time in 

 tombs at Bubastis ; but, so long as we fail to 

 discover any trace of the eighteenth dynasty 

 in the ruins of the temple, we are compelled to 

 believe that the Pharaohs of that line ruled 

 only in Upper Egypt, and that the Delta must 

 still have been in the possession of the Hyksos." 

 According to this view, the strength of the 

 foreign element was not finally broken till in 

 the nineteenth dynasty, and Seti I may have 



