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town of Rameses, which was built by the Israelites, but his theory has not been generally accepted, although there is no doubt whatever that Tchar and Tanis are one and the same town. The other names of Tanis given by Dr. Brugsch in his great Dictionnaire Géographique are "Mesen, Mesen of the North, Teb of the North, and Behutet of the North." Tanis was situated on the right or east bank of the Tanitic branch of the Nile, about thirty miles nearly due west of the ancient Pelusium; and as it was near the northeast frontier of Egypt, it was always one of the towns which formed the object of the first attack of the so-called Hyksos, Syrians, Assyrians, Greeks, Arabs, and Turks. The excavations which have been made in the ruins round about Şan by Mariette and others prove that Tanis must have been one of the largest and most important cities in the Delta. The earliest monuments found here date from the time of Pepi I., VIth dynasty, about B.C. 3233; the next oldest are the black granite statues of Usertsen I. and Âmenemḥāt II., a sandstone statue of Usertsen II., an inscribed granite fragment of Usertsen III., and two statues of Sebek-hetep III. Following these come the most interesting black granite sphinxes, which are usually said to be the work of the so-called Hyksos, but which are, in the writer's opinion, older than the period when these people ruled over Lower Egypt. The cartouches inscribed upon them only prove that many kings were anxious to have their names added to these monuments. The greatest builder at Tanis was Rameses II., who erected a temple with pylons, colossal statues, obelisks and sphinxes. Pasebkhānu, Shashanq I. and Shashanq III. repaired and added to the buildings in Tanis, and they took the opportunity of usurping sphinxes, obelisks, etc., which had been set up by earlier kings. The famous red granite 'Tablet of four hundred years' was found at Ṣân. The inscription upon it, which is of the time of Rameses II., is

dated in the four hundredth year of a Hyksos king named

'Ãa-peh-peḥ-Set, son of the Sun, Nub-Set' () GN), which appears to prove that this king

reigned 400 years before the time of Rameses II.

The last native king of Egypt whose name is mentioned at Tanis is Nectanebus II., and after him come the Ptolemies. The stele, commonly called the 'Decree of Canopus,' which was set up in the ninth year of Ptolemy III., Euergetes I. (B.C. 238), was found here. The trilingual inscription in hieroglyphics, Greek, and Demotic, mentions at some length the great benefits which this king had conferred upon Egypt, and states what festivals are to be celebrated in his honour and in that of Berenice. The priests assembled at Canopus from all parts of Egypt resolved that these things should be duly inscribed upon stele, of which one should be placed in every large temple in Egypt to commemorate their resolution.

Under the Roman Empire Tanis still held a high position among the towns of the Delta, and the Egyptians considered it of sufficient importance to make it an episcopal see. In the list of the bishops who were present at the Council of Chalcedon (A.D. 451), the name of Apollonius, Bishop of Tanis, is found. Tanis must not be confounded with Tennis, the sea-port town which grew and increased in importance as Tanis declined; and it is difficult to understand why Tanis should have dwindled away, considering that Arab writers have described its climate as being most salubrious, and its winter like summer. Water was said to flow there at all times, and the inhabitants could water their gardens at their will; no place in all Egypt, save the Fayyûm, could be compared with it for fertility, and for the beauty of its gardens and vines. In the sixth century of our era the sea invaded a large portion of the territory of Tanis, and it went on encroaching each year little by little,

until all its villages were submerged. The inhabitants removed their dead to Tennis, and established themselves there; Tennis was evacuated by its inhabitants A.D. 1192, and the town itself was destroyed A.D. 1226.

From Zakâzîk the traveller formerly proceeded to Cairo via Balbês, when the following places were passed :—

Burdên

بردین

with 3,477 inhabitants.

Balbês, with 9,873 inhabitants.

سبين القناطير,Shabin al-Kanatir

Anshâș ar-Ramle, with 2,551 inhabitants. Mashtûl as-Sûk J, with 6,936 inhabitants. the stopping place for those who wish to visit Tell al-Yahudiyah, ie, 'The Hill of the Jewess' where Onias, the high priest of the Jews, is thought by some to have built a temple by the permission of Ptolemy Philometor, in which the Egyptian Jews might worship. The site of the town was occupied in very early times by a temple and other buildings which were set up by Rameses II. and Rameses III.; a large number of the tiles which formed parts of the walls of these splendid works are preserved in the British Museum. The attention of Egyptologists was first called to this site by Emil Brugsch Pâshâ, who visited it in 1870, and found large numbers of glazed tiles, etc., of the XIXth dynasty in the hands of the natives; these had been found in the ruins on the hill. Excavations on the site were made by Brugsch and Mariette in the autumn of that year, and a plan of it was printed by Prof. Hayter Lewis in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archæology in 1872. The statues discovered among the ruins on the hill, which was from 25 to 30 feet high, were described in the Aeg. Zeitschrift for 1871, and Brugsch described his excavations in Maspero's Recueil in 1886

(tom. VIII, p. 1 ff., On et Onion). Some years later Prof. Naville dug through the site, and it was again examined in 1906 by Prof. Petrie. The building excavated by Brugsch was the work of Rameses III, and this probably stood on the site, or even the remains, of an older edifice. Of the temple which Onias is thought to have built here no authentic remains have been discovered, and the identification of the site with Avaris, the Hyksos stronghold, is purely theoretical.

Nawa, S, with 2,814 inhabitants.

Kalyub,, the capital of the Province of Kalyubiyah, with 11,680 inhabitants.

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CAIRO.

Cairo (from the Arabic Kâhira, 'the Victorious,' because the planet Kâhir or Mars was visible on the night of the foundation of the city) is situated on the right or eastern bank of the Nile, about fourteen miles south of the division of the Nile into the Rosetta and Damietta branches. It stands at a distance of three or four miles from the site of the old fortress of Babylon of Egypt, whereon, subsequently, Al-Fusțâț was built. It is called in Arabic Masr it is the largest city in Africa, and its population was in 1897 570,062 souls. Josephus says that the fortress of the Babylon of Egypt, which stood on the spot occupied at a later date by old Cairo or Fusțâț, was founded by the Babylonian mercenary soldiers of Cambyses, B.C. 525; Diodorus says that it was founded by Assyrian captives in the time of Rameses II., and Ctesias is inclined to think that it was built in the time of Semiramis. The opinions of the two last mentioned writers are valuable in one respect, for they show that it was believed in their time that Babylon of Egypt was of very ancient foundation. During the reign of Augustus. it was the headquarters of one of the legions that garrisoned. Egypt, and remains of the town and fortress which these legionaries occupied are still to be seen a little to the north of Al-Fusțâț. The word Fusțâț† means a 'tent,' and the place obtained its name from the tent of 'Amr ibn al-'Âși,

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Masr is a form of the old name Mîşri (Hebrew Misraim), by which it is called in the cuneiform tablets, B.C. 1450.

,فساط another form of وفسطاط t Arab

=Byzantine Greek

Þoroárov. The meanings given to this word by Dozy are :-campe, campement, pavillon.

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