for ever and ever! When there had come (to this city) the hereditary lord and the chief governor of the city, the fan-bearer on the right of the king, the leader of the foreign legions and captain of the foreigners, the constable of the fortress of Khetam (the Etham of Scripture) of Zal, the leader of the Mazai (police), the royal scribe, the chief master of the horse, the high priest of the Ram-god in Mendes, the high priest of the god Sutekh and the praying-priest of the goddess Buto Aptani, the chief of the prophets of all the gods, Seti, the son of the hereditary prince, the commander of the foreign legions, the captain of the foreigners, the constable of Khetam in Zal, the royal scribe and master of the horse, Pira Messu, the child of the lady and priestess of the sungod Ra, Thaa,-then spake he thus: "Hail to thee, Set, son of Nub, thou strong one, in the holy ship, etc.; grant me a fortunate existence, that I may serve thee, and grant me to remain [in thy house for evermore]."' The plain covered with the ruins resembles a vast charnel-house, on which the dead remnants of stones, memorials of Ramses the Great, lie scattered broadcast, broken, and worn, like the mouldering bones of generations slain long ago. From several inscriptions (not less than a dozen), on the obelisks and fragments of ruins at Tanis, we derive incidentally much important information of an historical and mythological character. One of these describes the king as 'Warrior (mohar) of the goddess Antha (Anaïtis), 6 Another calls him the bull in the land of Ruten (sic); another again boasts of him, that he has made a great slaughter among the Shasu Arabs. Inscriptions on pillars say that he has prepared festivals for the temples of the god Sutekh,' that he has conquered Kush and led into captivity the people of the Shasu; 'there, where he opened a road, he has taken them for his possession.' For the knowledge of these and similar records, which throw light on the history of the king and on the importance of Tanis, science is indebted to the researches of E. de Rougé.1 The hieratic rolls of papyrus, which have outlived the ravages of time, with one voice designate the newly founded temple-city (for the kings of the 18th dynasty had quite abandoned the old Zoan) as the central point of the court history of Egypt. Here resided the scribes, who in their letters have left behind for us the manifold information which the life at the court, the ordinances of the king and of the chief officials, and their relations with their families in the most distant parts of the country, required them to give without reserve. Zoan, or as the place is henceforth called, Pi-Ramessu, 'the city of Ramses,' became henceforward the especial capital of the empire. It will be useful to the reader to hear in what manner an Egyptian letter-writer described the importance of this town on the occasion of his visit to it:-2 'So I arrived in the city of Ramses-Miamun, and I have found it excellent, for nothing can compare with it on the Theban land and soil. (Here is the seat) of the court. It is pleasant to live Comp. Mélanges d'Archéol. Egypt. tome ii. p. 288, foll. 2 This Letter of Panbesa, containing an account of the city of Rameses,' is translated by Mr. C. W. Goodwin, in the Records of the Past, vol. vi. p. 11, foll.-ED. 3 The Egyptian for court is Pa-khennu. The word means the residence of a king for the time being, as, for example, in the inscription first decyphered by me, of the seventh year of Alexander II. (see Egypt. Zeitschrift, 1871, p. 2), it is related of Ptolemy I. that he made the city of Alexandria his Khennu, that is, in. Its fields are full of good things, and life passes in constant plenty and abundance. Its canals are rich in fish, its lakes swarm with birds, its meadows are green with vegetables, there is no end of the lentils; melons with a taste like honey grow in the irrigated fields. Its barns are full of wheat and durra, and reach as high as heaven. Onions and sesame are in the enclosures, and the appletree blooms (?). The vine, the almond-tree, and the fig-tree grow in the gardens. Sweet is their wine for the inhabitants of Kemi. They mix it with honey. The red fish is in the lotus-canal, the Borian-fish in the ponds, many kinds of Bori-fish, besides carp and pike, in the canal of Pu-harotha; fat fish and Khipti-pennu fish are in the pools of the inundation, the Hauaz-fish in the full mouth of the Nile, near the city of the conqueror' (Tanis). The city-canal Pshenhor produces salt, the lake region of Pahir natron. Their sea-ships enter the harbour, plenty and abundance is perpetual in it. He rejoices who has settled there. My information is no jest. The common people, as well as the higher classes, say, “Come hither! let us celebrate to him his heavenly and his earthly feasts." The inhabitants of the ready lake (Thufi) arrived with lilies, those of Pshensor with papyrus flowers. Fruits from the nurseries, flowers from the gardens, birds from the ponds, are dedicated to him. Those who dwell near the sea came with fish, and the inhabitants of their lakes honoured him. The youths of the "Conqueror's city" were perpetually clad in festive attire. Fine oil was on their heads of fresh curled hair. They stood at their doors, their hands laden with branches and flowers from Pahathor, and with garlands from Pahir, on the day of the entry of king Ramessu-Miamun, the god of war Monthu upon earth, in the early morning of the monthly feast of Kihith (that is, on the 1st of Khoiakh). All people were assembled, neighbour with neighbour, to bring forward their complaints. his residence. It would lead to many errors to recognise this sense in the same appellation found in the quarries of Silsilis, as has been done, among others, by M. Maspero and Professor Lauth, of Munich, who has even made a high school in the midst of the quarries of Silsilis; but such errors are easily avoided by a research into the real meaning of the inscriptions. 1 I give this name conjecturally, as the Egyptian word is not yet explained. 'Delicious was the wine for the inhabitants of the "Conqueror's city." Their cider was like their sherbets were like almonds mixed with honey. There was beer from Kati (Galilee) in the harbour, wine in the gardens, fine oil at the lake Sagabi, garlands in the apple-orchards. The sweet song of women resounded to the tunes of Memphis. So they sat there with joyful heart, or walked about without ceasing. King Ramessu-Miamun, he was the god they celebrated.' 1 In spite of the unexplained names of the fishes and plants, the scribe could hardly have given a clearer or livelier account of the impression made on his susceptible mind by the new city of Ramses in its festal garments on the day of the entry of Pharaoh. We may suppose that many a Hebrew, perhaps Moses himself, jostled the Egyptian scribe in his wandering through the gaily dressed streets of the temple-city. And this city of Ramses is the very same which is named in Holy Scripture as one of the two places in which Pharaoh had built for him arei miskenoth,' treasure cities,' as the translators understand it. It would be better, having regard to the actual Egyptian word mesket,' 'meskenet,' temple, holy place' (as, for example, king Darius designates his temple erected in the great Oasis to the Theban Amon) to translate it 'temple-cities.' The new Pharaoh, who knew not 6 6 1 Respecting the above translation I may be allowed to remark, that the versions of the document, as yet known to me, labour under the common fault of mistaking the connection of the several parts of the description given in the letter, or rather of not expressing it at all. One sentence follows another without any transition from the preceding to the succeeding. 2 Exod. i. 13: And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Raamses.' Joseph,' who adorned the city of Ramses, the capital of the Tanitic nome, and the city of Pithom, the capital of what was afterwards the Sethroitic home, with temple-cities, is no other, can be no other, than Ramessu II., of whose buildings at Zoan the monuments and the papyrus-rolls speak in complete agreement. And although, as it happens, Pitum is not named as a city in which Ramses erected new temples to the local divinities, the fact is all the more certain, that Zoan contained a new city of Ramses, the great temple-district of the newly-founded sanctuaries of the above-named gods. Ramessu is the Pharaoh of the oppression, and the father of that unnamed princess, who found the child Moses exposed in the bulrushes on the bank of the river. While the fact, that the Pharaoh we have named was the founder of the city of Ramses, is so strongly demonstrated by the evidence of the Egyptian records both on stone and papyrus, that only want of intelligence and mental blindness can deny it, the inscriptions do not mention one syllable about the Israelites. We must suppose that the captives were included in the general name of foreigners, of whom the documents make such frequent mention. The hope, however, is not completely excluded, that some hidden papyrus may still give us information about them, as unexpected as it would be welcome. We must again remark, and insist with strong emphasis on the fact, that from this time, and in the future history of the empire, the town of Zoan-Tanis is of great importance. On the wide plains before Zoan, |