came the large statues of the Hyksos period, and columns were removed to Boulak, British Museum, and the United States. The rest of the temple is still standing. 6. Onias (Tel-el-Yahoudi), near the station of Shibeen-el-Kanater. There was a Twentieth Dynasty palace, now destroyed, and there are tombs of a Greco-Jewish colony, a large Roman camp, and walls of plastered guard-houses three feet high. 7. Daphne (Defneh or Tahpanhes of Old Testament), twelve miles from Salahieh station, or from Kantara on the Suez Canal. Here there are remains of the fort mentioned by Jeremiah, and a Greek camp around it; Twenty-sixth Dynasty, or 660-560 B.C. Large quantities of painted archaic Greek pottery now in the British Museum came from here. 8. Naucratis (Tel Gaief), five miles from Tehel-Baroud station. Here we may still see the site of the Greek town and temples to Apollo, Aphrodite, Dioscuri, etc., and by searching, many small objects and painted pottery can be found, date 660 B.c. to 200 A.D. A great deal of archaic Greek pottery was taken from here to the British Museum. It will be remembered that the site of Naucratis. was quite lost, until one day Mr. Petrie was shown by a Bedouin a piece of a Greek statue near Cairo, and, following up this clue, he discovered this interesting buried city. 9. But it is not only in the Delta that much has been brought to light. If the visitor will take the train southwards to Medineh-el-Fayoum, and entrust himself to a Greek inn lately opened there, he will find the site of a large temple at the north end of the town, and parts of a pylon still standing. Date from the Twelfth Dynasty to the time of Ptolemy II. 10. Biahmu is six miles north of Medineh-elFayoum, and here are the pedestals of the colossi of Amen-emhat III., who made Lake Moris and the famous Labyrinth in the Twelfth Dynasty. The fragments found here are now at Oxford. 11. Howara is four miles east of Medineh-elFayoum. The Pyramid was tunnelled unsuccessfully from the north in 1888, and the true passage was opened from the south in 1889. Date, Amenemhat III. and his daughter Ptah-nefru of the Twelfth Dynasty. Her altar and her bowls are now at Boulak, as also the finest set of amulets known. The site of the Labyrinth is south of the Pyramid, where fragments of it can be seen. the north of the Pyramid is the cemetery from which the Roman portraits were sent to Boulak, and to the National Gallery in London. To 12. Illahun is thirteen miles east of Medineh el-Fayoum, and fourteen miles from Beni-souef station. Mr. Petrie has now opened this Pyramid also, and has cleared its temple, which is half a mile to the east. Fragments of this temple are now in England, dating from Usertasen II. of the Twelfth Dynasty. One of the most interesting discoveries is that the town of the builders of this Pyramid joins the temple on the north, and here may be seen rows of houses for workmen and for stores, and numerous flint instruments lying about. Many papyri and tools were found, and pottery with Cypriote letters on it, thus proving the early date of the Cypriote alphabet. There is plenty of pottery of the Twelfth Dynasty lying about; and to the west and south of the Pyramid is a cemetery which was originally used by the Twelfth Dynasty, and later used again from the Twenty-first to the Twenty-sixth. Near the temple are Coptic graves of the fourth century of the Christian era. 13. Medineh Grob (i.e. raven) is at the south end of the Illahun dyke, which originally dated from the Twelfth Dynasty, but has since shifted its position. Here there is a town of the Nineteenth Dynasty, built over the ruins of a temple of Thothmes III., and from here much Greek pottery of the Mycena type, with Cypriote and Phoenician letters on it, has been sent to the British Museum. G Behind the town is a cemetery, the south end of which contains graves of the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Dynasties, while the north was used during the Ptolemaic period. Many Greek and demotic papyri were found with the cartonnages of the mummies, and Boulak is now the proud possessor of two large bronze pans and three wooden statuettes of the Nineteenth Dynasty. It is to be regretted that, while so much has been done by English enterprise, Boulak should have 30 few results to show from its own excavations. Many of the antiquities found pass into the hands of dealers; and so lately as 1888 several statues of great value of the Fourth and Fifth Dynasties were found at Memphis, and had afterwards to be bought by the Boulak Museum. 14. The cuneiform inscriptions of Tel-el-Amarna, the necropolis of part of the Eighteenth Dynasty, half-way between Cairo and Thebes, have lately been deciphered by Professor Sayce. From his unique researches we find that, one hundred years before the Exodus, active literary intercourse was going on between Babylon, Egypt, Palestine, and Syria, and this was carried on by means of the Babylonian cuneiform writing. He believes that Babylonian was as much the language of diplomacy and of cultivated society as French has been in modern times, though it must have taken years |