M. Soldi is also of opinion that the Egyptian sculptors were ignorant of many of the most useful tools known to the Greek, Roman, and modern sculptors, such as the emery-tube, the diamond-point, etc.
[110] On the left leg of this colossus is the famous Greek inscription discovered by Messrs. Bankes and Salt. It dates from the reign of Psamatichus I, and purports to have been cut by a certain Damearchon, one of the two hundred and forty thousand Egyptian troops of whom it is related by Herodotus (book ii, chaps. xxix and xxx) that they deserted because they were kept in garrison at Syene for three years without being relieved. The inscription, as translated by Colonel Leake, is thus given in Rawlingson’s “Herodotus” (vol. ii, p. 37); “King Psamatichus having come to Elephantine, those who were with Psamatichus, the son of Theocles, wrote this: ‘They sailed, and came to above Kerkis, to where the river rises ... the Egyptian Amasis....’ The writer is Damearchon, the son of Amœbichus, and Pelephus (Pelekos), the son of Udamus.” The king Psamatichus here named has been identified with the Psamtik I of the inscriptions. It was in his reign, and not as it has sometimes been supposed, in the reign of Psamatichus II, that the great military defection took place.
[111] Ra, the principal solar divinity, generally represented with the head of a hawk and the sun-disk on his head. “Ra vent dire faire, disposer; c’est, en effet, le dieu Ra qui a disposié organsé le monde, dont la matière lui a été donnée par Ptah.”—P. Pierret: “Dictionaire d’Archéologie Égyptienne.”
“Ra est une autre des intelligence démiurgiques. Ptah avait créé le soleil; le soleil, a son tour, est le créateur des êtres, animaux et hommes. Il est à l’hémisphère supérieure ce qu’Osiris est à l’hémisphère inferieure. Ra s’incarne à Heliopis.”—A. Mariette: “Notice des Monuments à Boulak,” p. 123.
[112] An instance occurs, however, in a small inscription sculptured on the rocks of the Island of Sehayl in the first cataract, which records the second panegyry of the reign of Rameses II.—See “Récuil des Monuments, etc.:” Brugsch, vol. ii, Planche lxxxii, Inscription No. 6.
[113] Though dedicated by Rameses to Nefertari, and by Nefertari to Rameses, this temple was placed, primarily, under the patronage of Hathor, the supreme type of divine maternity. She is represented by Queen Nefertari, who appears on the façade as the mother of six children and adorned with the attributes of the goddess. A temple to Hathor would also be, from a religious point of view, the fitting pendant to a temple of Ra. M. Mariette, in his “Notice des Monuments à Boulak,” remarks of Hathor that her functions are still but imperfectly known to us. “Peutêtre était-elle à Ra ce que Maut est à Ammon, le récipient où le dieu s’engendre lui-même pour l’éternité.”
[114] It is not often that one can say of a female head in an Egyptian wall painting that it is beautiful; but in these portraits of the queen, many times repeated upon the walls of the first hall of the Temple of Hathor, there is, if not positive beauty according to our western notions, much sweetness and much grace. The name of Nefertari means perfect, good, or beautiful companion. That the word “Nefer” should mean both good and beautiful—in fact, that beauty and goodness should be synonymous terms—is not merely interesting as it indicates a lofty philosophical standpoint, but as it reveals, perhaps, the latent germ of that doctrine which was hereafter to be taught with such brilliant results in the Alexandrian schools. It is remarkable that the word for truth and justice (Ma) was also one and the same.
There is often a quaint significance about Egyptian proper names which reminds one of the names that came into favor in England under the commonwealth. Take, for instance, Bak-en-Khonsu, Servant-of-Khons; Pa-ta-Amen, the Gift of Ammon; Renpitnefer, Good-year; Nub-en Tekh, Worth-Her-Weight-in-Gold (both women’s names); and Hor-mes-out’-a-Shu, Horus Son-of-the-Eye-of Shu—which last, as a tolerably long compound, may claim relationship with Praise-God Barebones, Hew-Agag-in-Pieces-before-the-Lord, etc.
[115] Ra Harmachis, in Egyptian Har-em-Khou-ti, personifies the sun rising upon the eastern horizon.
[116] See chap. viii, p. 126, also chap. xxi.