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Plan of the Temple of Rameses II. at Abydos.

high. The fragment of the second Tablet of Abydos, now in the British Museum, came from this temple. The few scenes and fragments of inscriptions which remain are interesting but not important.

A little to the north of the temple of Rameses II. is a Coptic monastery, the church of which is dedicated to Amba Musas.

FARSHÛT AND KAŞR ES-SAYYAD.

FARSHUT, 368 miles from Cairo, on the west bank of the river, called in Coptic Bepoort, contains a sugar factory.

KASR ES-SAYYAD, or "the hunter's castle," 376 miles from Cairo, on the east bank of the river, marks the site of the ancient Chenoboscion. The Copts call the town щепесит.

KENEH AND THE TEMPLE OF DENDERAH.*

Keneh, 405 miles from Cairo, on the east bank of the river, is the capital of the province of the same name. This city is famous for its dates, and the trade which it carries on with the Arabian peninsula.

A short distance from the river, on the west bank, a little to the north of the village of Denderah, stands the Temple of Denderah, which marks the site of the classical Tentyra or Tentyris, called TenTwpЄ by the Copts, where the goddess Hathor was worshipped. During the Middle Empire quantities of flax and linen fabrics

*The Greek Tentyra, or Tentyris, is derived from the Egyptian Ta-en-ta-rert; the name is

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were produced at Tentyra, and it gained some reputation thereby. In very ancient times Chufu or Cheops, a king of the IVth dynasty, founded a temple here, but it seems never to have become of much importance, probably because it lay so close to the famous shrines of Abydos and Thebes. The wonderfully preserved Temple now standing there is probably not older than the beginning of our era; indeed, it cannot, in any case, be older than the time of the later Ptolemies: hence it must be considered as the architectural product of a time when the ancient Egyptian traditions of sculpture were already dead and nearly forgotten. It is, however, a majestic monument, and worthy of careful examination.† Strabo says (Bk. xvii., ch. i. 44) of this town and its inhabitants: "Next to Abydos is the city Tentyra, where the crocodile is held in peculiar abhorrence, and is regarded as the most odious of all animals. For the other Egyptians, although acquainted with its mischievous disposition, and hostility towards the human race, yet worship it, and abstain from doing it harm. But the people of Tentyra track and destroy it in every way. Some, however, as they say of the Psyllians of Cyrenæa, possess a certain natural antipathy to snakes, and the people of Tentyra have the same dislike to crocodiles, yet they suffer no injury from them, but dive and cross the river when no other person ventures to do so. When crocodiles were brought to Rome to be exhibited, they were attended by some of the Tentyritæ.

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* M. Mariette thought that a temple to Hathor existed at Denderah during the XIIth, XVIIIth and XIXth dynasties.

+ "Accessible comme il l'est aujourd'hui jusque dans la dernière de ses chambres, il semble se présenter au visiteur comme un livre qu'il n'a qu'à ouvrir et à consulter. Mais le temple de Dendérah est, en somme, un monument terriblement complexe. . . . Il faudrait plusieurs années pour copier tout ce vaste ensemble, et il faudrait vingt volumes du format (folio !) de nos quatre volumes de planches pour le publier." -Mariette, Dendérah, Description Générale, p. 10.

A reservoir was made for them with a sort of stage on one of the sides, to form a basking place for them on coming out of the water, and these persons went into the water, drew them in a net to the place, where they might sun themselves and be exhibited, and. then dragged them back again to the reservoir. The people of Tentyra worship Venus. At the back of the fane of Venus is a temple of Isis; then follow what are called Typhoneia, and the canal leading to Coptos, a city, common both to the Egyptians and Arabians." (Falconer's translation.) It will be remembered that Juvenal witnessed a fight between the crocodile worshippers of Kom Ombo and the crocodile haters of Tentyra.

On the walls and on various other parts of the temples are the names of several of the Roman Emperors; the famous portraits of Cleopatra and Cæsarion her son are on the end wall of the exterion Passing along a dromos for about 250 feet, the portico, A, open at the top, and supported by twenty-four Hathor-headed columns, arranged in six rows, is reached. Leaving this hall by the doorway facing the entrance, the visitor arrives in a second hall, B, having six columns and three small chambers on each side. The two chambers C and D have smaller chambers on the right and left, E was the so-called sanctuary, and in F the emblem of the god worshipped in the temple was placed. From a room on each side of C a staircase led up to the roof. The purposes for which the chambers were used are stated by M. Mariette in his Denderah, Descrip. Gén. du Grand Temple de cette ville. On the ceiling of the portico is the famous "Zodiac," which was thought to have been made in ancient Egyptian times; the Greek inscription=A.D. 35, written in the twenty-first year of Tiberius, and the names of the Roman Emperors, have clearly proved that, like that at Esneh, it belongs to the Roman time. The Zodiac from Denderah, now at Paris, was cut out, with the permis

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