140 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 high-road 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 ives. 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 | 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. 
Jn 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 im 
T'anis 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. 
