And now it appears there is another. During the year 1892 the officers of the Museum of Gîzeh, under the direction of M. de Morgan, excavated a temple at Memphis to the north of the hut containing the recumbent statue of Rameses, and during their work they found two magnificent statues of Ptah, "les plus remarquables statues divines qu'on ait encore trouvées en Égypte,"[88] and a colossal model in rose granite of the sacred boat of Ptah.
These discoveries have led the officers in question to the conclusion that the building among the ruins of which these priceless treasures have been found is veritably the world-renowned temple of Ptah of Memphis. It may, therefore, be accepted as such for the purpose of the present inquiry, although it is difficult to reconcile its emplacement in relation to the statues with the accounts given by the Arab historians.
In January, 1893, Captain Lyons, R.E., was good enough to accompany me to determine the orientation of the newly uncovered temple walls. We had already, two years previously, carefully measured the bearings of the statues of Rameses. We found the temple in all probability facing westwards, and not eastwards; this we determined by a seated statue facing westwards; and we concluded its orientation, assuming a magnetic variation of 4½° west, to be 12¾° north of west, and the hills in front of it, assuming the village of Mît-Rahîneh non-existent, to be 50′ high.
Here, then, we get reproduced almost absolutely the conditions of the obelisk at Heliopolis in a Ptah temple oriented to Capella 5200 B.C.
We are driven, then, to the conclusion that the star Capella is personified by Ptah, and that as Capella was worshipped setting, Ptah is represented as a mummy. If this be so, we must also accept another conclusion: the temples both at Annu and Memphis were dedicated to Ptah.
About 5300 B.C. we seem almost in the time of the divine dynasties, and begin to understand how it is that in the old traditions Ptah precedes Rā and is called "the father of the beginnings, and the creator of the egg of the Sun and Moon."[89]
We are driven to the conclusion that this worship at Annu and Memphis was the worship of the sun's disc when setting, at the time of the year heralded by Capella, when it had the declination of 10° north. The dates on which the sun had this declination were, as already stated, about April 18 and August 24 of our Gregorian year. The former, in Egypt, dominated by the Nile, was about the time of the associated spring and harvest festivals.
So much for the Ptah mummy form of the Sun-God, to which the Theban priests erected no important temples. There was still another mummy form of the Sun-God, the worship of which existed at Thebes, but which they did their best to abolish by the intensification of the worship of Amen-Rā.
At Thebes, as we have seen, the temple of Mut is associated with one at right angles to it, facing north-west. The amplitudes are 72½° north of east and 17½° north of west. I have shown that the temple of Mut would allow γ Draconis to be seen along its axis about 3200 B.C. I now state that Spica would be seen along the axis of the rectangular temple at the same time.
The cult in this temple-system there can be no doubt, I think, was the worship of Min, otherwise read Amsu, or Khem in ithyphallic mummy form. This was associated possibly with a harvest-home festival on May 1. (Amplitude of temple, 17½° north of west = declination 15° = sun's N. declination on May 1.)