Philae is as charmingly situated as it is interesting for its monuments. The week spent on this holy island belongs to the most delightful reminiscences of our journey. We were accustomed to assemble before dinner, when our scattered work was done, on the elevated terrace of the temple, which rises steeply above the river on the eastern shore of the island, to observe the shades of the well-preserved temple, built of sharply-cut, dark-glowing blocks of sandstone, which grow across the river and mingle with the black volcanic masses of rock, piled wildly one upon another, and between which the golden-hued sand pours into the valley like fire-floods. The island appears to have become sacred at a late period among the Egyptians, under the Ptolemies. Herodotus, who went up to the Cataracts in the time of the Persians, does not mention Philae at all; it was then inhabited by Ethiopians, who had also half Elephantine in their possession. The oldest buildings, now to be found on the island, were erected nearly a hundred years subsequent to the journey of Herodotus, by King Nectanebus, the last but three of the kings of Egyptian descent, upon the southern point of the island. There is no trace of any earlier buildings, not even of destroyed or built-up remains. Inscriptions of much older date are to be found on the great island of Bigeh close by, called hieroglyphically Senmut. It was already adorned with Egyptian monuments during the Old Empire; for we found there a granite statue of King Sesurtesem III., of the twelfth dynasty. The little rock-islet Konossa, hieroglyphically Kenes, has also very ancient inscriptions on the rocks, in which a new, and hitherto quite unknown, king of the Hyksos period is named. The hieroglyphical name of the island of Philae has generally been read Manlak. I have found it several times undoubtedly written Ilak. This, with the article, becomes Philak, in the mouths of the Greeks Philai. The sign read “man” by Champollion also interchanges in other groups with “i,” thus the pronunciation I-lak, P-i-lak, Memphitic Ph-i-lak is confirmed.
We have made a precious discovery in the court of the great temple of Isis, two somewhat word-rich bilingual, i. e. hieroglyphical and Demotic decrees of the Egyptian priests, of which one contains the same text as the decree of the Rosetta stone. At least, I have till now compared the seven last lines, which not only correspond with the Rosetta in the contents but in the length of each individual line; the inscription must first be copied, ere I can say more about it; in any case the gain for Egyptian philology is not inconsiderable, if only a portion of the broken decree of Rosetta can be restored by it. The whole of the first part of the inscription of Rosetta, which precedes the decree, is wanting here. Instead of it, a second decree is there, which relates to the same Ptolemæus Epiphanes; in the beginning the “fortress of Alexander,” i. e. the city of Alexandria, is mentioned, for the first time, upon any of the monuments hitherto made known. Both decrees close, like the inscription of Rosetta, with the determination to set up the inscription in hieroglyphical, Demotic, and Greek writing. But the Greek inscription is wanting, if it were not written in red and rubbed out when Ptolemy Lathyrus engraved his hieroglyphic inscriptions over earlier ones.[61]
The hieroglyphic series of Ptolemies, which occurs here, again begins with Philadelphus, while it begins with Soter in the Greek text of the Rosetta inscription. Another very remarkable circumstance is, that Epiphanes is here called the son of Philopator Ptolemæus, and Cleopatra is mentioned, while according to the historical accounts the only wife of Philopator was named Arsinoe, and is so named in the Rosetta inscription and on other monuments. She is certainly also named Cleopatra in one passage of Pliny; this would have been taken for an error of the author or a mistake of the manuscripts, if a hieroglyphic and indeed official document did not present the interchange of names. There is consequently no farther reason to place, as Champollion-Figeac does, the embassy of Marcus Atilius and Marcus Acilius from the Roman Senate to Egypt to settle a new treaty concerning the Queen Cleopatra mentioned by Livy, in the time of Ptolemæus Epiphanes, instead of under Ptolemæus Philopator, as other authors inform us. We must rather conceive, either that the wife and sister of Philopator had both names, which would not obviate all the difficulties, or that the project which Appian mentions of a marriage of Philopator with the Syrian Cleopatra, who afterwards became the wife of Epiphanes, was carried out after the murder of Arsinoe, without mention of it by the historians. Here naturally means are wanting to me in order to bring this point clearly out.[62]
The quantity of Greek inscriptions at Philae is innumerable, and Letronne will be interested to hear that I have found on the base of the second obelisk, still in its own place, of which a portion only went to England with the other obelisk, the remains of a Greek inscription written in red, and perhaps once gilt, like those lately discovered on the base in England, but which is, of course, extremely difficult to decipher. That the hieroglyphical inscriptions of the obelisks, which I myself copied in Dorsetshire, besides the Greek on the base, and subsequently published in my Egyptian Atlas, have nothing to do with the Greek inscriptions, and were also not contemporaneously set up, I have already stated in a letter to Letronne; but whether the inscription on the second base had not some connection with that of the first is still a question; the correspondence of the three known inscriptions seems certainly to be settled.
The principal temple of the island was dedicated to Isis. She alone is named “Lady of Philek;” Osiris was only Θεὸς σύνναος, which is peculiarly expressed in the hieroglyphics, and is only exceptionally called “Lord of Philek;” but he was “Lord of Ph-i-uêb,” i. e. Abaton, and Isis, who was σύνναος there, is only occasionally called “Lady of Ph-i-uêb.” From this it is evident that the famous grave of Osiris was upon his own island of Phiuêb, and not on Philek. Both places are distinctly indicated as islands by their determinations. It is therefore not to be thought that the Abaton of the inscriptions and historians was a particular place on the island of Philae; it was an island in itself. So also do Diodorus and Plutarch intimate by their expression πρὸς Φίλαις. Diodorus decidedly refers to the island with the grave of Osiris as a distinct island, which was named ἱερὸν πεδίον, “the holy field,” by reason of this grave. This is a translation of Ph-i-uêb, or Ph-ih-uêb (for the h is also found expressed hieroglyphically), Koptic
, Ph-iah-uêb, “the sacred field.”[63] This consecrated place was an Abaton, and unapproachable except for the priests.
On the sixth of November we quitted the charming island, and commenced our Ethiopian journey. Already at Debôd, the next temple lying to the south, hieroglyphically Tabet (in Koptic perhaps
), we found the sculptures of an Ethiopian King Arkamen, the Ergamenes of the historians, who reigned at the time of Ptolemæus Philadelphus, and stood probably in very friendly relations with Egypt. In the French work on Champollion’s Expedition (I have not Rosellini’s work with me) there is great confusion here. Several plates, belonging to Dakkeh, are ascribed to Debôd, and vice versâ. At Gertassi we collected nearly sixty Greek inscriptions. Letronne, who knew them through Gau, has perhaps already published them; I am anxious to know what he had made of the γόμοι, the priests of whom play a conspicuous part in these inscriptions, and of the new Gods Σρούπτιχις and Πουρεποῦνις.