* By its inhabitants it was accounted older than any
other city of Egypt.
2 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Béato of a
bas-relief in the temple of Seti I. at Abydos. The two gods
are conducting King Ramses II., here identified with Osiris,
towards the goddess Hâthor.
It was a small town built on the plain not far from the Nile at the apex of the Delta, and surrounded by a high wall of mud bricks whose remains could still be seen at the beginning of the century, but which have now almost completely disappeared.
1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin. The open lotus-flower, with a bud
on either side, stands upon the usual sign for any water-
basin. Here the sign represents the Nû, that dark watery
abyss from which the lotus sprang on the morning of
creation, and whereon it is still supposed to bloom.
One obelisk standing in the midst of the open plain, a few waste mounds of débris, scattered blocks, and two or three lengths of crumbling wall, alone mark the place where once the city stood. Ka was worshipped there, and the Greek name of Heliopolis is but the translation of that which was given to it by the priests—Pi-ra, City of the Sun. Its principal temple, the "Mansion of the Prince," rose from about the middle of the enclosure, and sheltered, together with the god himself, those animals in which he became incarnate: the bull Mnevis, and sometimes the Phoenix. According to an old legend, this wondrous bird appeared in Egypt only once in five hundred years. It is born and lives in the depths of Arabia, but when its father dies it covers the body with a layer of myrrh, and flies at utmost speed to the temple of Helio-polis, there to bury it.[*]
* The Phoenix is not the Bonû (cf. p. 186, note 2), but a
fabulous bird derived from the golden sparrow-hawk, which
was primarily a form of Haroêris, and of the sun-gods in
second place only. On the authority of his Heliopolitan
guides, Herodotus tells us (ii. 83) that in shape and size
the phoenix resembled the eagle, and this statement alone
should have sufficed to prevent any attempt at identifying
it with the Bonû, which is either a heron or a lapwing.