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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. 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.)

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 exterior. 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,

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written in the O twenty-first year of Tiberius,

band the names

of the Roman

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Zodiac

The

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Dende

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Plan of the Temple at Denderah.

Paris, was cut

out, with the permission of Muḥammad 'Ali, in

1821, from

the small temple of

Osiris, generally called

the "Temple on the Roof."

The Iseium is sit

uated to the

south of the temple of Hathor, and consists of three chambers and a corridor; near by is a pylon which was dedicated to Isis in the 31st year of Cæsar Augustus.

The Mammisi, Per-mestu, or “house of giving birth," also built by Augustus, is the name given to the celestial dwelling where the goddess was supposed to have brought forth the third person of the triad which was adored in the temple close by.

The Typhonium stands to the north of the Temple of Hathor, and was so named because the god Bes figures of whom occur on its walls, was confused with Typhon; it measures about 120 feet x 60 feet, and is surrounded by a peristyle of twenty-two columns.

The Temple of Denderah was nearly buried among the rubbish which centuries had accumulated round about it, and a whole village of wretched mud-huts actually stood upon the roof! The excavation of this fine monument was undertaken and completed by M. Mariette, who published many of the texts and scenes inscribed upon its walls in his work mentioned above.

The crocodile was worshipped at Kom Ombo, and Juvenal gives an account of a fight which took place between the people of this place and those of Denderah, in which one of the former stumbled, while running along, and was caught by his foes, cut up, and eaten.

A few miles beyond Denderah, on the east bank of the river, lies the town of Kuft, the Qebt of the hieroglyphics, and KeyT of the Copts; it was the principal city in the Coptites nome, and was the Thebaïs Secunda of the Itineraries. From Koft the road which crossed the desert to Berenice on the Red Sea started, and the merchandise which passed through the town from the east, and the stone from the famous porphyry quarries in the Arabian desert must have made it wealthy and important. It held the position of a port on the Nile for merchandise from a very early period; and there is no doubt that every Egyptian

king who sent expeditions to Punt, and the countries round about, found Ķuft most usefully situated for this purpose. A temple dedicated to the ithyphallic god Amsu, or Menu, Isis and Osiris, stood here. It was nearly destroyed by Diocletian A.D. 292. A copy of a medical papyrus in the British Museum states that the work was originally discovered at Coptos during the time of Cheops, a king of the IVth dynasty; it is certain then that the Egyptians considered this city to be of very old foundation.

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Kûs, 425 miles from Cairo, on the east bank of the Nile, marks the site of the city called Apollinopolis Parva by the Greeks, and Qeset by the Egyptians. To the west of the city stood the monastery of Saint Pisentius, who flourished in the VIIth century, and the well of water which is said to have been visited by our Lord and the Virgin Mary and Joseph; the Copts built numbers of churches in the neighbourhood.

Nakada, 428 miles from Cairo, on the west bank of the river, nearly opposite the island of Mațarah, was the home of a large number of Copts in early Christian times, and several monasteries were situated there. The four which now remain are dedicated to the Cross, St. Michael, St. Victor, and St. George respectively, and tradition says that they were founded by the Empress Helena; the most important of them is that of St. Michael. The church in this monastery "is one of the most remarkable Christian structures in Egypt, possessing as it does some unique peculiarities. There are four churches, of which three stand side by side in such a manner that they have a single continuous western wall. Two of the four have an apsidal haikal with rectangular side chapels, while the other two are entirely rectangular; but the two apses differ from all other apses in Egyptian churches by projecting... beyond the

eastern wall and by showing an outward curvature. They form a solitary exception to the rule that the Coptic apse is merely internal, and so far belong rather to Syrian architecture than to Coptic. The principal church shows two other features which do not occur elsewhere in the Christian buildings of Egypt, namely, an external atrium surrounded with a cloister, and a central tower with a clerestory . . . . . Possibly the same remark may apply to the structure of the iconostasis, which has two side-doors and no central entrance, though this arrangement is not quite unparalleled in the churches of Upper Egypt, and may be a later alteration. It will be noticed that the church has a triple western entrance from the cloisters." (Butler, Ancient Coptic Churches of Egypt, Vol. I., p. 361.) In 1897 M. de Morgan carried on some important excavations here, and discovered a large number of prehistoric tombs, and the tomb of a king called Āḥā, who has, by some, been identified with Menȧ, the first king of the Ist dynasty.

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