The Egypt of the Hebrews and Herodotos

by A. H. Sayce

Herodotos seems to have been at Sais when the [pg 219] festival of “burning lamps” was celebrated there. On the night of the festival lamps were lighted round about the houses in the open air, the lamps being cups filled with salt and oil, on the surface of which a wick floated. All who could thronged to Sais to take part in the ceremonies; those who could not be there lighted their lamps at home and so observed the rites due to Neit. The festival took place in the summer, probably at the time of the summer solstice, and the illuminations characteristic of it are still perpetuated in some of the numerous festivals of modern Egypt. The annual festival in honour of Isis was observed all over Egypt in the same way.

As the Greek traveller approached Memphis the pyramids of Gizeh were shown to him towering over the water on his right. His visit to them was reserved to another day, and he continued to sail on to the ancient capital of the country. Memphis was still in all its glory. Its lofty walls of crude brick, painted white, shone in the sun, and its great temple of Ptah still preserved the monuments and records of the early dynasties of Egypt. Built on an embankment rescued from the Nile, it was said, by Menes, the first monarch of the united kingdom, Memphis, though of no great width, extended along the banks of the river for a distance of half-a-day's journey. To the west, in the desert, lay its necropolis, [pg 220] the city of the dead, reaching from Abu Roâsh on the north to Dahshûr on the south. On the opposite side of the Nile, a little to the north, was the fortress of Khri-Ahu, which guarded the approach to the river. Where Cairo now stands Herodotos saw only sand and water. Even Khri-Ahu was merely an insignificant village at the foot of a fortress of mud brick; the strong walls and towers of hewn stone in which the Roman legion afterwards kept ward over Egypt were as yet unbuilt. All who could afford it lived in Memphis and its suburbs, and the rock-hewn tombs at the foot of the citadel of modern Cairo are of the Roman age.

From Memphis to Heliopolis was rather more than twenty miles, or a morning's row on the river. Herodotos, therefore, after having been told at Memphis of the experiment made by Psammetikhos to discover the origin of language, speaks of having “turned into” Heliopolis in order to make further inquiries about the matter, “for the Heliopolitans are said to be the best informed of the Egyptians.” We may gather from his words that he made an excursion to Heliopolis while he was staying in Memphis. But he would have passed it again on his homeward voyage.

The site of Heliopolis is well-known to every tourist who has been to Cairo. The drive to the [pg 221] garden and ostrich-farm of Matarîyeh and the obelisk of Usertesen i. is a pleasant way of filling up an afternoon. But of the ancient city of Heliopolis or On, with its famous temple of Ra, the Sun-god, its university of learned priests, and its innumerable monuments of the past, there is little now to be seen. The obelisk reared in front of its temple a thousand years before Joseph married the daughter of its high-priest still stands where it stood in his day; but the temple has vanished utterly. So, too, has the sister obelisk which was erected by its side, and of which Arabic historians still have something to say. Nothing is left but the mud-brick wall of the sacred enclosure, and a thick layer of lime-stone chippings which tell how the last relics of the temple of the Sun-god were burnt into lime for the Cairo of Ismail Pasha. One or two fragments were rescued from destruction by Dr. Grant Bey, the most noticeable of which is a portion of a cornice, originally 30 feet 4 inches in length, which had been erected by Nektanebo ii., the last of the native Pharaohs. Blocks with the names of the second and third Ramses are also lying near the western gate of the enclosure, and in the eastern desert are the tombs of the dead. Nothing more remains of the old capital of Egyptian religion and learning. The destruction is indeed complete; the spoiler whom Jeremiah saw [pg 222] in prophetic vision has broken “the images of Beth-Shemesh,” and burnt with fire “the houses of the gods of the Egyptians.” If we would see the obelisks and images of On we must now go to the cities and museums of Europe or America. It was from Heliopolis that the huge scarab of stone now in the British Museum was originally brought to Alexandria, and at Heliopolis Cleopatra's Needle was first set up by Thothmes iii. in front of the temple of Amon.

Heliopolis was the centre and source of the worship of the Sun-god in ancient Egypt, in so far, at all events, as he was adored under the name of Ra. The worship goes back to prehistoric days. Menes was already a “son of Ra,” inheriting his right to rule from the Sun-god of On. The theology of Heliopolis is incorporated in the earliest chapters of the Book of the Dead, that Ritual of the Departed, a knowledge of which ensured the safe passage of the dead man into the world to come. It was in the great hall of its first temple that Egyptian mythology believed Horus to have been cured of his wounds after the battle with Set. The origin of the temple, in fact, like the origin of the school of priests which gathered round it, was too far lost in the mists of antiquity for authentic history to remember.

As befitted its theological character, Heliopolis was rich in sacred animals. The bull Mnêvis, in which [pg 223] the Sun-god was incarnated, was a rival of the bull Apis of Memphis, the incarnation of Ptah. The two bulls point to a community of worship between the two localities in that primeval age when neither Ra of Heliopolis nor Ptah of Memphis was known, and when the primitive Egyptian population—whoever they may have been—were plunged in the grossest superstitions of African fetichism. Herodotos did not hear of the bull Mnêvis. But he was acquainted with the story of another sacred animal of Heliopolis, the bennu or Phœnix, the sacred bird of Ra. Indeed, the fame of the phœnix had long before penetrated to Greece. Hesiod alludes to it, and the account of the marvellous bird given by Herodotos was “stolen,” we are told by Porphyry, from his predecessor Hekatæos. Hekatæos says that it was like an eagle, whereas the monuments show that it was a heron, and Herodotos follows him in the blunder. We may argue from this, as Professor Wiedemann does, that Herodotos himself never saw its picture. But otherwise his account is correct. Its wings were red and gold, and it represented the solar cycle of five hundred years.

When Strabo visited Heliopolis in the age of Augustus he found it already half deserted. Its schools and library had been superseded by those of Alexandria, and although the houses in which the [pg 224] priestly philosophers had once lived were still standing, they were now empty. Among them was the house in which Plato and Eudoxos had studied not long after the time when Herodotos was there. In spite, therefore, of the Persian wars Herodotos must have found the ancient university still famous and flourishing. Just as in the Cairo of to-day the whole circle of Mohammedan science is taught in the University of El-Azhar on the basis of the Qorân, so in the Heliopolis which Herodotos visited all the circle of Egyptian knowledge was still taught and learned on the basis of the doctrines of the Heliopolitan school. The feelings with which the Greek traveller viewed the professors and their pupils—if, indeed, he was allowed to do so—must have been similar to those with which an English tourist now passes through the Azhar mosque.

From Heliopolis Herodotos continued his voyage down the Pelusiac arm of the Nile to Bubastis, thus following nearly the same line of travel as the modern tourist who goes by train from Cairo to Zagazig. The rubbish heaps of Tel Basta, just beyond the station of Zagazig, mark the site of Bubastis, called Pi-beseth in the Old Testament (Ezek. xxx. 17), Pi-Bast, “the Temple of Bast,” by the Egyptians. The cat-headed goddess Bast presided over the fortunes of the nome and city, where she was identified [pg 225] with Sekhet, the lion-headed goddess of Memphis. But the cat and the lion never lay down in peace together. As a hieroglyphic text at Philæ puts it, Sekhet was cruel and Bast was kindly.

The exclusive worship of Bast at Bubastis, however, dated from the time of Osorkon ii. of the twenty-second dynasty, as Dr. Naville's excavations have made plain. Before that period other deities, more especially Butô and Amon-Ra, reigned there. Bast, in fact, was of foreign origin. She was the feminine form of Bes, the warrior god who came from the coasts of Arabia, and her association with the cat perhaps originated far away in the south.

The description given by Herodotos of Bubastis and its festival is clearly that of an eye-witness. He tells us how the temple stands in the middle of the town surrounded by a canal which is shaded with trees, and how the visitor looks down upon it from the streets of the city, which had grown in height while the level of the temple had remained unaltered. He tells us further how a broad street runs from it to the market-place, and thence to a chapel dedicated to Hermês, and how at the great annual festival crowds of men and women flocked to it in boats, piping and singing, clapping the hands and dancing, offering sacrifices when they arrived at the shrine, and drinking wine to excess. A similar sight can be [pg 226] seen even now in the month of August at Tantah, where the religious fair is thronged by men and women indulging in all the amusements recounted by the old Greek traveller, sometimes beyond the verge of decency. Wine alone is absent from the modern feast, its place being taken by hashish and raki.