38 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[Jan. 19, 1885. 



terms in which reference to myself is made — I must take 

 note of tlie objection to this part of ray argument wliich 

 has been advanced by Prof. G. Ebers in tlie second edition 

 of his " Durch Gosen zum Sinai" (p. .')1.')). Speaking of 

 my letter to the Acadrmi/ of April 24, 1880, he first states 

 my opinion as to the correlative nomenclature of Pa-Tum 

 and Pa-Ranieses ; then goes on to say that " the places 

 referred to arc not twin-cities, and therefore situate close 

 together, in Miss Edwards's sense, since Ranieses is not 

 named after the God I{a, but after the King Rameses, the 

 oli'spring of the sun." 



But to this I reply that the King Rameses was by him- 

 self virtually identified with Ra, his divine father, and 

 that he considered himself not merely the " son of the 

 Sun," but the actual incarnation of Ra upon earth. He 

 certainly held himself to be sufliciently a god to be a cor- 

 relative to Tum in the naming of his two treasure- cities, 

 and in the dedication of their respective temples.* 



Having made this objection. Professor Ebers goes on to 

 express his approbation of various other points suggested 

 in the letter in question, dwelling especially on my 

 contention that " Ramsis," as the name of the 

 native village at the foot of Tel-el-Maskhuta,t must be a 

 survival of the ancient name of the place. " Also," he 

 ■writes, " the remark that the Pharaoh of the Oppression 

 (Rameses II.) made the Jews build new towns,^ should 

 not remain unnoticed." I am very glad to take this op- 

 pertunit}' of expressing the gratification with which I find 

 my views upon this important matter confirmed by the 

 approval of so eminent an authority. 



And now, having gone over every point of the topo- 

 graphical, documentary, and historical evidence connected 

 with the cities of Pa-Tum and Pa- Rameses, and having 

 verified these items of evidence, one by one, with the 

 mounds of Tel Aboo-Sooleyman and Tel-el-Maskhuta, I 

 at last find myself at the end of a lengthy and a somewhat 

 laborious inquiry. It is now so long since I began that 

 incjuiry, that the primary object with which it was under- 

 taken has almost dropped out of sight. That object was 

 to ascertain if possible — or as nearly as possible — whether 

 Rameses II., whose mummy was discovered in the famous 

 hiding-place at Dayr-el-Bakaree, in July, 1881, was, 

 or was not, that Bible " Pharaoh " who oppressed the 

 Hebrews. To this Biblical problem there exists but one 

 really definite clue, that clue being the name of one of the 

 " treasure-cities " which the Hebrews were compelled to 

 build under circumstances of such exceptional rigour that 

 the making of " bricks without straw " has passed into a 

 common proverb. For " Raamses," or Rameses, is evi- 

 dently so called after the name of its founder, just as 

 Alexandria was called after Alexander, Constantinople 

 after Constantine, St. Petersburg after Peter the Great, 

 and Pennsylvania after William Penn. From among 

 thirteen kings of the name of Rameses, it is not diflicult 

 to select the only one whose epoch, surroundings, and 

 length of reign coincide even approximately with those of 

 the Pharaoh of the Bible. This king is Rameses II. 

 If it can, therefore, be shown that Rameses II. was 

 indeed the founder of either, or both, of two liekheunu, 

 or fortified frontier cities, called Pa-Tum and Pa-Rameses, 

 situate in the land of Goshen ; and if the very mounds 



• At Aboo-Simbcl, for instance, in the Great (rock-cut) Temple 

 made by Eamcses II., we find Rameses tlio God entlironed among 

 tlio deities of the inner sanctuary ; and, more moustrouslj' signifi- 

 cant than all the rest, a bas-relief on the walls of the same temple 

 represents Kameses the Pharaoh burning inceuso before Eamoses 

 the God. 



t Knowledge, Dec. 8, 1882, p. 450. 



j Ibid., Sept. 8, p. 2-11; also, Jan. 12, p. 22. 



which cover the ruins of those cities can be identified with 

 a reasonable degree of certainty, then, not only is an 

 interesting problem in a fair way to be solved, but we ha\e 

 almost gained an historical standpoint of supremo import- 

 ance for purposes of future inquiry. From this stand- 

 point, when it is finally reached, we may hope to obtain a 

 clear outlook over the vast field of ancient history ; while, 

 as a basis for calculation, it will unquestionably enable us 

 to determine a long chain of chronological and astronomical 

 data. 



Having brought together and compared all the scattered 

 items of evidence which bear upon this question, I must 

 leave others to decide whether I have, or have not, suc- 

 ceeded in proving my case as far as it can be proved with- 

 out the decisive help of pick and spade. That pick and 

 spade may ere long be called in to settle this problem, and 

 others of still greater moment, is, however, my earnest 

 desire. And if what I have written has awakened in any 

 of my readers not only a curiosity to solve the secret of 

 Tel-el-Maskhuta, but a willingness to promote that project 

 for the excavation of the historic mounds of the Delta,* 

 which is the great object of my labours and my hopes, I 

 shall be more than content. 



NIGHTS WITH A THREE-INCH 

 TELBSCOPE.t 



By a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. 



AN examination of the one Circumpolar constellation yet 

 undescribed — we mean Cepheus — will complete our 

 survey of the Heavens ; round the whole 24 hours of 

 which we have now travelled. To begin with, the reader 

 may find a very severe test for the light-grasping power of 

 his instrument, and the excellence of his own eye, in 191 

 of Piazzi's Hour II., which lies at a distance of some 10° on 

 a line leading from the Pole Star to /3 Persel The 

 components are close, and the observer will need a very 

 dark night and excellent definition to see the com- 

 panion at all. K Cephei (shown, but not lettered, in the 

 map in an odd little corner of the constellation running 

 into Draco) is a fine pair, which will be seen as in fig. 69. 

 /5 is a wider and also an unequal pair. In each of these 

 cases the small star is blue. To the east-north-east of 

 « Cephei is a vertical line of small stars. The upper one 

 of these is I, a tolerably close and somewhat unequal pair, 

 which will repay examination. It is represented in fig. "O. 

 c Cephei is a beautiful object, being, as AVeljb says, " some- 

 thing like ft Cygni." Finally we arrive at o Cephei, a 

 very close and unequal pair, delineated in fig. 71. Both 

 in this and c the small stars are blue, as are, curiously, so 

 many of the comites in this constellation. 



We may say in conclusion that in this series of papers 

 we have simply endeavoured to describe a few of the chief 

 and most easily-recognizable objects on the face of the 

 celestial vault, that are well within the optical power of a 

 three-inch telescope. Had we been justified in assuming 

 that all our readers were in possession of the admirable 



* See "Egyptian Antiquities," the Times, March 30, 1882; also 

 " Proposed Excavation in the Egyptian Delta," the Academy, 

 April 1, 1882. 



t Wo have omitted for the present matter relating to the constel- 

 lations Capricornus, Equuleus, Pegasus, and Pisces, which was ori- 

 ginally to have appeared earlier. This will be given in due season, 

 such as "The Stars in their Seasons " will indicate. F.R.A.S. has 

 obligingly promised to write the papers mentioned in the last para- 

 graph of the present paper, and they also will appear in duo season, 

 alternating with the valuable papers on Jlicroscopic Work con- 

 tributed by Mr. Slack. 



