RESULTS OP EXCAVATIONS AT BUBASTIS. 3 



now a field of ruins, which is still most impressive, although 

 not so much so as last year, since a great many interesting 

 monuments have been carried away. A space of the length of 

 COO feet is covered with enormous granite blocks, capitals of 

 columns, fragments of Hathor heads and broken statues of 

 colossal size. The general form of the temple is still dis- 

 cernible. It consisted of four halls, the dates of which differ. 

 The first, from the east, which is perhaps the most ancient, 

 had at the entrance two enormous columns with palm capitals ; 

 outside the door were the two great Hyksos statues, one of 

 which is now in the British Museum. Beyond was a second 

 hall, also very old. After the time of Osorkon II. it was called 

 the " festive hall," in memory of a great religious ceremony 

 which took place in the twenty-second year of his reign. Fur- 

 ther west still was the most luxurious part of the temple : a hall 

 supported by columns with lotus or palm- leaf capitals, and by 

 pillars ending in a beautifully-sculptured Hathor head, the 

 best specimen of which is now in the Boston Museum. The 

 termination of the temple was a room of a, very extensive area, 

 probably the largest of the four ; it was never finished, and at 

 the end was the shrine of the goddess Bast, an exquisite piece 

 of sculpture, fragments of which are to be seen in the British 

 Museum. 



Except Tanis, a city which in many respects has a great 

 resemblance to Bubastis, there is no city in the Delta which has 

 yielded so many monuments, of such very different epochs, 

 varying from the Fourth dynasty to the Ptolemies. I must 

 say I do' not believe one could easily find excavations more 

 interesting, and at times more exciting, than these. A cir- 

 cumstance which added to the surprises and to the unforeseen, 

 is, that there is no temple which has gone through such frequent 

 and complete transformations, and where the usurpation is so 

 easily discernible and has been practised on such a large scale. 

 You have heard of the mania of Barneses II. for writing his 

 name everywhere, no matter who was the author of the 

 monument on which he desired to record his memory. The 

 occasions in which the name of Rameses II. is met with in the 

 temple of Bubastis are nearly innumerable. I have examined 

 with the greatest care the colossal architraves on which his 

 name is written in hieroglyphics more than two feet high, and 

 I have not found one of them which was not a usurpation 

 everywhere an old inscription had been erased ; what Rameses 

 II. really added to the temple is probably not considerable, 

 though at first sight one would think that hardly anything 

 had existed before his reign. 



One of the results of the excavations is to show that 

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