The interesting problem concerning the owner of the name Εὐπάτωρ, which Letronne endeavoured to solve in a new way in connection with the inscriptions of the obelisk of Philae, seems to be determined by the hieroglyphical inscriptions, where the same circumstances occur, but lead to other conclusions.[47] I have discovered several very perfect series of Ptolemies, the longest coming down to Neos Dionysos and his wife Cleopatra, who was surnamed Tryphæna by the Egyptians, according to the hieroglyphic inscriptions.[48] A fact of some importance is also that in this Egyptian list of Ptolemies, the first King is never Ptolemæus Soter I. but Philadelphus. In Qurna, where Euergetes II. is adoring his ancestors, not only Philometor, the brother of Euergetes, is wanting, which may easily be accounted for, but also Soter I., and it is an error of Rosselini, if he look upon the king beneath Philadelphus as Soter I. instead of Euergetes I. It seems that the son of Lagus, although he assumed the title of King from 305 B.C., was not recognized by the Egyptians as such, as his cartouches do not appear upon any monument erected by him. The rather, therefore, do I rejoice, that I have not yet found his name once upon an inscription of Philadelphus, as the father of Arsinoe II. But here, it must be observed, Soter certainly has the Royal Kings about his names, and a peculiar cartouche; but before both cartouches, contrary to the usual Egyptian custom, there stands no royal title, although his daughter is called “royal daughter,” and “Queen.”[49]
It is remarkable how little Champollion seems to have attended to the monuments of the Old Empire. In his whole journey through Middle Egypt up to Dendera, he only found the rock graves of Benihassan worthy of remark, and these, too, he assigns to the sixteenth and seventeenth dynasty, therefore to the New Empire. He mentions Zauiet el Meitîn and Siut, but scarcely makes any remark about them.
So little has been said by others of most of the monuments of Middle Egypt, that almost everything was new to me that we found here. My astonishment was not small, when we found a series of nineteen rock tombs at Zauiet el Meitîn, which were all inscribed, gave the names of the departed, and belong to the old time of the sixth dynasty, thus almost as far back as the pyramid builders.[50] Five of them contain, several times repeated, the cartouche of the Macrobiote Apappus-Pepi, who is reported to have lived one hundred and six years, and reigned one hundred; in another, Cheops is mentioned. On one side is a single tomb, of the time of Ramses.
At Benihassan I have had a complete rocktomb perfectly copied; it will serve as a specimen of the grandiose style of architecture and art of the second flourishing time of the Old Empire, during the mighty twelfth dynasty.[51] I think it will cause some surprise among Egyptologers, when they learn from Bunsen’s work,[52] why I have divided the tablet of Abydos, and have referred Sesurtesen and Amenemha, these Pharaohs, well known through Heliopolis, the Faiûm, Benihassan, Thebes, and up to Wadi Halfa, from the New Empire into the Old. It must then have been a proud period for Egypt—that is proved by these mighty tombs alone. It is interesting, likewise, to trace in the rich representations on the walls, which put before our eyes the high advance of the peaceful arts, as well as the refined luxury of the great of that period; also the foreboding of that great misfortune which brought Egypt, for several centuries, under the rule of its northern enemies. In the representations of the warlike games, which form a characteristically recurring feature, and take up whole sides in some tombs, which leads to a conclusion of their general use at that period afterwards disappearing, we often find among the red or dark-brown men, of the Egyptian and southern races, very light-coloured people, who have, for the most part, a totally different costume, and generally red-coloured hair on the head and beard, and blue eyes, sometimes appearing alone, sometimes in small divisions. They also appear in the trains of the nobles, and are evidently of northern, probably Semitic, origin. We find victories over the Ethiopians and negroes on the monuments of those times, and therefore need not be surprised at the recurrence of black slaves and servants. Of wars against the northern neighbours we learn nothing; but it seems that the immigration from the north-east was already beginning, and that many foreigners sought an asylum in fertile Egypt in return for service and other useful employments.
I have more in mind the remarkable scene in the tomb of the royal relation, Nehera-si-Numhotep, the second from the north, which places the immigration of Jacob and his family before our eyes in a most lively manner, and which would almost induce us to connect the two, if Jacob had not really entered at a far later period, and if we were not aware that such immigrations of single families could not be unfrequent. These, however, were the precursors of the Hyksos, and prepared the way for them in more than one respect. I have traced the whole representation, which is about eight feet long, and one-and-a-half high, and is very well preserved through, as it is only painted. The Royal Scribe, Nefruhotep, who conducts the company into the presence of the high officer to whom the grave belongs, is presenting him a leaf of papyrus. Upon this the sixth year of King Sesurtesen II. is mentioned, in which that family of thirty-seven persons came to Egypt. Their chief and lord was named Absha, they themselves Aama, a national designation, recurring with the light-complexioned race, often represented in the royal tombs of the nineteenth dynasty, together with three other races, and forming the four principal divisions of mankind, with which the Egyptians were acquainted. Champollion took them for Greeks when he was in Benihassan, but he was not then aware of the extreme antiquity of the monuments before him. Wilkinson considers them prisoners, but this is confuted by their appearance with arms and lyres, with wives, children, donkeys and luggage; I hold them to be an immigrating Hyksos-family, which begs for a reception into the favoured land, and whose posterity perhaps opened the gates of Egypt to the conquering tribes of their Semetic relations.
The city to which the rich rock-Necropolis of Benihassan belonged, and which is named Nus in the hieroglyphic inscriptions, must have been very considerable, and without doubt lay opposite on the left bank of the Nile, where old mounds are still existing, and were marked on the French maps. That the geography of the Greeks and Romans knows nothing of this city, Nus, as indeed was true of many other cities of the Old Empire, is not very astonishing, if it be considered that the five hundred years of Hyksos dominion intervened. The sudden fall of the Empire and of this flourishing city, at the end of the twelfth dynasty, is recognised by some in the circumstance, that of the numerous rock-tombs, only eleven bear inscriptions, and of these but three are completely finished. To these last, broad pathways led directly up from the banks of the river, which, at the steep upper end, were changed into steps.
Benihassan is, however, not the only place where works of the twelfth dynasty were found. Near Bersheh, somewhat to the south of the great plain, in which the Emperor Hadrian built, to the honour of his drowned favourite, the city of Antinoe, with its magnificently and even now partially passable streets, with hundreds of pillars, a small valley opens to the east, where we again found a series of splendidly-made rock-tombs of the twelfth dynasty, of which the greater portion are unfortunately injured. In the tomb of Ki-si-Tuthotep the transportation of the great colossus is represented, which was already published by Rosellini, but without the accompanying inscriptions; from the latter it is certain that it was formed of limestone (the hieroglyphic word for which I first ascertained here), and was about thirteen Egyptian ells, that is circa twenty-one feet, in height.[53] In the same valley, on the southern rock wall, there is hewn a series of still older, but very little inscribed tombs, which, to judge from the style of the hieroglyphics, and the titles of the deceased, belong to the sixth dynasty.
A few hours more to the southward comes another group of graves, also belonging to the sixth dynasty; here King Cheops is incidentally mentioned, whose name already appeared several times in an hieratic inscription at Benihassan. At two other places, between the valley of El Amarna, where the very remarkable rock-tombs of King Bech-en-Aten is situated, and Siut, we found graves of the sixth dynasty, but presenting few inscriptions. Perring, the pyramid measurer, has, in a recent publication, attempted to establish the strange notion, which I found also existed in Cairo, that the monuments of El Amarna were the work of the Hyksos: others wished to refer them to a period anterior to that of Menes, by reason of their certainly, but not inexplicable, peculiarities; I had already explained them in Europe as contemporaneous kings[54] of the eighteenth dynasty.
In the rock wall behind Siut, mighty tombs are gaping, in which we could recognize the grand style of the twelfth dynasty already from a distance. Here too, unfortunately, much has been lately destroyed of these precious remnants, as it was found easier to break down the walls and pillars of the grottoes, than to hew out the stones from the mass.
I learnt from Selim Pasha, the Governor of Upper Egypt, who received us at Siut in the most friendly manner, that the Bedouins had some time since discovered quarries of alabaster two or three hours’ journey into the eastern mountains, the proceeds of which Mahommed Ali had presented him, and from his dragoman I ascertained that there was an inscription on the rocks. I therefore determined to undertake the hot ride upon the Pasha’s horses, which he had sent to El Bosra for this purpose, from El Bosra thither, in company with the two Weidenbachs, our dragoman and the khawass. There we found a little colony of eighteen workmen, with their families, altogether thirty-one persons, in the lonely, wild, hot rock gorge, employed in the excavation of the alabaster. Behind the tent of the overseer there were preserved, in legible, sharply-cut hieroglyphics, the names and titles of the wife, so much revered by the Egyptians, of the first Amasis, the head of the eighteenth dynasty, who expelled the Hyksos, the remains of a formerly much larger inscription. These are the first alabaster quarries, the age of which is certified by an inscription. Not far from the place were others, which were already exhausted in antiquity; from those now reopened they have extracted within the last four months more than three hundred blocks, of which the larger ones are eighty feet long and two feet thick. The Pasha informed me, through his dragoman, that on our return I should find a piece, the size and form of which I was myself to determine, of the best quality the quarry afforded, which he desired me to accept as a testimonial of his joy at our visit. The alabaster quarries discovered in this region are all situated between Bersheh and Gauâta; one would be inclined, therefore, to consider El Bosra as the ancient Alabastron, if its position could be reconciled with the account of Ptolemæus; at any rate, Alabastron has certainly nothing to do with the ruins in the valley of El Amarna, as hitherto thought, to which also the relation of Ptolemæus does not answer, and which seems to be quite different. The hieroglyphical name of these ruins recurs continually in the inscriptions.