Jax. 19, 1883.] 



• KNOWLEDGE • 



37 



in two places a dotted line (numbered 6) marks where the 

 French engineers, under 31. de Lesseps, discovered the 

 excavated bed, and even some o£ the masonry, of the canal 

 of Seti I. At these points, the ancient channel was 

 merely deepened and widened ; so that the new Fresh- 

 water Canal partly flows in the very path of the old one. 

 To show this in our map was, of coui*se, impossible ; the 

 dots indicating the ancient waterway are, therefore, placed 

 under the line (No. 7) which represents its modern 

 successor. 



Bearing in mind that the canal ."^hnkan/t is expressly 

 described as " North " of Shet-llor, it is not a little 

 startling to see, on first glancing at our map, a piece of 

 water occupying the precise position which we should 

 expect to see occupied by the Pool of llorus. This piece 

 of water (No. 1 1 on the map) is Lake Mahsamah,* a large 

 pool formerly tilled by the high Niles. and now utilised 

 as a reservoir by the Canal Company. Writing to the 

 AcaiUmtj upon this suVijoct in 1880,t 1 expressed my belief 

 that the SIctllor of the Kamak insL-ription, the Shtt-IIor 

 of Panbesa's l.-tter, and Lake Mahsamali, were all one and 

 the same. Taking into consideration, however, a difficulty 

 to which I did not then attach sufficient importance, I find 

 myself obliged to reject this tempting identification. 



" Tlio Pool of Ilortis >;ivos s.nlt," 



says Panbesa; whereas Lake Mahsamah is, and always 

 must have been, a fresh water deposit Salt pools, how- 

 ever, are no rarity in this neighbourhood, where every 

 marshy lagoon near the head of the Red Sea is a natural 

 salt factory. The bed of the Great Bitter Lake contains a 

 bank of solid salt, seven miles long by five miles broad, and 

 the northern extremity of this lake i.f only ten miles south 

 of the latitude of the ancient Canal. Assuming that in the 

 time of Menephthah the head of the Pied Sea was where it 

 now is, I see no reason why the Great Bitter Lake itself 

 may not have been the Shet-Hor of the letter and 

 the inscription. It was certainly tlie most likely source 

 from which the inhabitants of Pa-Rameses would have 

 procured their supply of salt; and the canal S/m/oma, or 

 Ta Teiui, lay to the north of it in those days, just as the 

 new Freshwater Canal lies to the north of it in ours. 

 And it is important to note in this connection that the 

 only opening towards the frontier in the neighbourhood of 

 Bubastis, and therefore the only point at which the extra 

 outposts of the Karnak inscription would be required, is 

 Wady Tumilat That inscription, J moreover, goes on to 

 say that the district which needed defence on this side, 

 was " all pasture land," and that " in the time of the 

 ancestors " (meaning under the earlier dynasties) it had 

 been " infested by barbarians." Now the land of Goshen 

 was essentially a pasture district, and was for that reason 

 assigned to the Israelites, who were herdsmen and 

 shepherds ; also Wady Tumilat was a direct short 

 cut, leading from the desert haunts of the Shasu 

 Bedaween into the heart of these fair pasturages — the 

 pasturages and pools (" Barhakuta ") of the neighbourhood 

 of Pa-Tum.§ The invading Hykshos, we may be sure, 

 poured in through this valley, as well as over the more 

 northern boundaries of the same frontier ; and the fore- 

 going sdlusion to the " barbarians " of ancestral times may 

 quite possibly be a reminiscence of those terrible guests. 



* Lake Mahsamah, on the border of which stands Mahsamah 

 villaffe, where onr cavalry during the late campaign made a dashing 

 attack and captured several trains. 



+ The Academy, April 21, 1880. 



jSee Knowledge, Xo. 50, p. 325, Vol. 11. 



§ IMd. Report of a captain of the frontier guard, respecting 

 the passage of certain Shasu and their herds. 



Thus we see that under the reign of Menephthah the con- 

 dition of the eastward frontier was more unsettled than 

 during the reign of Rameses II., and that the fortresses of 

 Pithom and Rameses were no longer deemed a sufficient 

 defence on that sida Tliis conclusion is fully borne out 

 V)y all that we know of the history of the time. During 

 the last years of Rameses II., the vast empire over which 

 he ruled was with difficulty held together by the mere 

 prestige of his great name ; but his death was followed by 

 in\asions of the lawless frontier tribes, revolts of oppressed 

 tributaries, and the exodus of the industrious and long- 

 suffering Hebrew colonists. 



7. Pa Jiamcses contained a temple dedicated to lia- 

 me.^es II., dnfied. This last point hinges so entirely 

 upon all which has gone before, that it may be said to 

 stand or fall with the case I haN'e attempted to prove. If 

 I have identified the place, then I have also identified its 

 local cult and all connected therewith. If " Ramsis " be 

 a corrupt survival of "Rameses," and Ijoth are the 

 " Raamses " of the Bible — if Tel-elMaskhuta does in 

 truth cntoni') the ruins of that lUkltcn, or " treasure 

 city," celebrated in the inscription of Pthah-Tatunen at 

 AbooSimbel, in the Anastasi papyri, Nos. II., III., and 

 IV., and in the Great Hieratic papyrus of Bologna — 

 then we know, as surely as the fact can be known 

 before the mound is excavated, that therein will be 

 found the remains of a "Royal Abode"* (in other words, a 

 temple) of Rameses Mer-Amen; that " Rameses jNIcr-Amen 

 was its god :t and that "festivals were there celebrated" 

 for him, even as festivals were celebrated at ^Memphis 

 for Phtah, the great primordial deity. J The paved 

 way, or dromos, leading to that temple, and two of the 

 sphinxes by which the dromos was bordered, have been 

 found, as already stated. § at some little distance from the 

 mound ; and that the ruins of the temple are bur.'el in 

 the heart of that mound is an inference which cannot fail 

 to be drawn by all who are acquainted with the general 

 plan of an Egyptian temple of this period. || Neithtr can 

 it be doubted that the sculptured slab described in 

 Chap. XIV.^ belonged also to this temjle, or to a sub- 

 ordinate chapel connected therewith. This slab (of 

 which an illustration is given in Sir Gardner Wilkinson's 

 " Materia Hieroglyphica" (App. No. 4) is described by 

 the Abbe Vigoureux as " an immense block of granite, re- 

 presenting on its face a bas-relief group of a Pharaoh 

 seated between the God Ra and the God Turn. This 

 Pharaoh is no other than Rameses II., whose name 

 occurs six times in the inscription engraved upon the 

 back of the block."** These two deities, Ra and Tum, 

 personify the rising and the setting sun, and, as M. 

 Grcbaut has shown, they were held reciprocally to engender 

 each other ; Ra, towards the decline of day, becoming 

 the parent of Tum, and Tum, as morning approached, 

 becoming the parent of Ra. Pa-Tum and Pa-Rameses 

 were, therefore, if not actually " twin-cities," as I formerly 

 suggested, at all events cities closely connected in regard 

 of the mythical relationship of their local deities ; the cult 

 of the one god being, in fact, the complement of the cult 

 of the other. They are cities which we might expect to 

 find at no great distance apart : as, in truth, we do find the 

 mounds of Tel Aboo-Sooleyman and Tel-el-3Iaskhuta. 



And here — while deprecating the too complimentary 



* Kxowr.EPGE, Sept. 29, 1882, p. 292. + Hid. 



X nid., p. 292. § Ihid., Dec. 8, 1882, p. 430. 



,| See tlie diagrams of Egyptian temples in Murray's " Handbook 

 for Egypt," Vol. I., pp. 74 and 75. 



•" Knowledge, Dec. 8, 1882, p. 450. 



•• See " La Bible et Ics Deconvertes Modcmes." F. Vigonreur. 

 A'ol. ii., p. 209. 



