4 EDOUARD NAVILLE. 



Bubastis was already a large city at a very remote date, 

 and that it went through the vicissitudes which have marked 

 the history of Egypt. It must rank between Tanis in the 

 north, and Heliopolis further south ; and in the narratives of 

 the events which took place in Lower Egypt, we must take 

 account of the presence of a great city at the entrance of the 

 valley called the Wadi Tumilat, the highroad from Egypt to 

 Syria. 



Let us go back to the dawn of the history of Egypt. 

 Manetho says, that under the first king of the Second dynasty, 

 a chasm opened itself near Bubastis, in which a great many 

 people lost their life. We do not go quite so far back in our 

 discoveries, but the Old Empire has left important traces in 

 the two first halls. Before having moved one single block, we 

 could see on the top of the ruins of the entrance hall a stone 

 where was sculptured a false door, such as is constantly met 

 with in the tombs of the Old Empire, namely, two door posts, 

 between which is a large roll generally bearing the name of 

 the deceased. How that kind of ornament occurs in a build- 

 ing without funerary character, I cannot explain ; however it 

 is to be traced to the Old Empire, but 1 could not make out 

 which king had it made, for his cartouches have been so care- 

 fully erased, that there remain only the top of the oval and a 

 disk. The subsequent researches in that part of the building 

 have not been fruitless ; we have unearthed the standard of 

 Cheops, and the standard and name of Chefren, the construc- 

 tors of the two great pyramids, who have both written their 

 name in the temple of Bubastis in large and beautiful hiero- 

 glyphs; the great antiquity of the temple is thus well established. 

 In the second hall we found, in 1887, the cartouche of a king 

 of the Sixth dynasty, Pepi, and not only his name, but his 

 titles which he engraved on what must have been the entrance 

 of a room. At the beginning of this century, Burton had 

 discovered the name of Pepi further north, at Tanis ; a doubt 

 had been expressed whether it was the king himself who had 

 extended his constructions so far north, or whether perhaps in 

 later years a stone bearing his name had been brought to 

 Tanis with building material, by Rameses II. or some other 

 king ; but now the doubt is no longer possible. It is not in 

 Tanis only, but also in Bubastis, that stones bearing the name 

 of Pepi are found, and here there are several, fitting together, 

 and the remains of a construction may be traced ; besides, Pepi 

 is in company with two other kings, a great deal more ancient. 

 Thus the foundation of Bubastis carries us back to the 

 beginning of the historical times of Egypt, and is contem- 

 porary with the pyramids, its oldest monuments. 



