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Khennu in

wall"; the place is usually called hieroglyphic texts. The ancient Egyptians here quarried the greater part of the sandstone used by them in their buildings, and the names of the kings inscribed in the caves here show that these quarries were used from the earliest to the latest periods. The most extensive of these are to be found on the east bank of the river, but those on the west bank contain the interesting tablets of Ḥeru-em-ḥeb, a king of the XVIIIth dynasty, who is represented conquering the Ethiopians, Seti I., Rameses II., his son Menephthaḥ, etc. At Silsila the Nile was worshipped, and the little temple which Rameses II. built in this place seems to have been dedicated chiefly to it. At this point the Nile narrows very much, and it was generally thought that a cataract once existed here; there is, however, no evidence in support of this view, and the true channel of the Nile lies on the other side of the mountain.

Kom Ombos, 556 miles from Cairo, on the east bank of the Nile, was an important place at all periods of Egyptian history; it was called by the Egyptians

Per-Sebek, "the temple of Sebek " (the crocodile god), and

Nubit, and w by the Copts. The oldest object here is a sandstone gateway which Thothmes III. dedicated to the god Sebek.

The ruins of the temple and other buildings at Kom Ombos are among the most striking in Egypt, but until the clearance. of the site which M. de Morgan made in 1893-94, it was impossible to get an exact idea of their arrangement. It is pretty certain that a temple dedicated to some god must have stood here in the Early Empire, and we know from M. Maspero's discoveries here in 1882, that Amenophis I. and Thothmes III., kings of the XVIIIth dynasty, carried out repairs on the temple which was in existence in their

days; but at the present time no parts of the buildings at Kom Ombos are older than the reigns of the Ptolemies. Thanks to the labours of M. de Morgan, the ruins may be thus classified :-The Mammisi, the Great Temple, and the Chapel of Hathor; and all these buildings were enclosed within a surrounding wall.

Plan of the Temple of Kom Ombos.

The Mammisi, or small temple wherein the festivals of the birth of the gods were celebrated, stood in front of the great temple, to the left; it consisted of a small courtyard, hall of columns, and the shrine. It was built by Ptolemy IX., who is depicted on the walls making offerings to Sebek, Hathor, Thoth, and other deities. The best relief remaining (see de Morgan, Kom Ombos, p. 50) is on the north wall, and represents the king on a fowling expedition through marshes much frequented by water fowl.

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The Great Temple. The pylon of the great temple has almost entirely disappeared, and only a part of the central pillar and south half remains. A few of the scenes are in good preservation, and represent the Emperor Domitian making offerings to the gods. Passing through the pylon, the visitor entered a large courtyard; on three sides was a colonnade containing sixteen pillars, and in the

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The Emperor Tiberius making an offering of land to Sebek and Hathor. (Bas-relief at Kom Ombos, Courtyard, column XVI.)

and round the whole of this section of the building ran a corridor, which could be entered through a door on the left into the second hall of columns, and a door on the right in the first chamber beyond. At the sides and ends of the sanctuary are numerous small chambers which were used probably either for the performance of ceremonies in connection with the worship of the gods, or by the priests.

686

ASWAN AND THE FIRST CATARACT.

Aswân (or Uswân), with over 13,000 inhabitants, the southern limit of Egypt proper, 587 miles from Cairo, on the east bank of the river, called in Egyptian Sun, or Sunt, n Coptic corn, was called by the Greeks Syene, which stood on the slope of a hill to the south-west of the present town. Properly speaking, Syene was the island of Elephantine, which the early Dynastic Egyptians called Ābu

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the elephant," probably on account of its shape, and it formed the metropolis of the first nome of Upper Egypt,

Ta-kens. As we approach the time of the Ptolemies,

the name Sunnu, i.e., the town on the east bank of the

*The form of the name which is approved by Yâkût (tom. 1, p. 139), the eminent Arabic geographer, is USWÂN, and he says distinctly that the first vowel is u, and that a sukûn, or mark of rest, is to follow; he gives the name in full thus,, USWÂNU. He then

form.

الاسوان

goes on to quote the form SUWANU,, but clearly prefers the first If to this we add the Arabic article al, we get the form AL-ASWÂN, which is actually given by Juynboll (vol. I, p. 64), or AL-USWÂN. The best authorities among the Arabic writers give the form "Uswân," and the best modern Arabic scholars, e.g., de Sacy, Barbier de Meynard, Wright, and others, pronounced the name either Uswân or Oswân. I have heard educated natives everywhere in Egypt pronounce it "Swân," and Ăswân, or Eswân (with the very short a ore sound which is always placed before a word beginning with two consonants, e.g., "espîrto,' for "spirit"), but never "Assûân," or "Assouan"; these are forms which are due to a misunderstanding as to the original form of the name.

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Nile, from whence comes the Arabic name Aswân, takes the place of Abu. The town obtained great notoriety among the Greeks from the fact that Eratosthenes and Ptolemy considered it to lie on the tropic of Cancer, and to be the most northerly point where, at the time of the summer solstice, the sun's rays fell vertically; as a matter of fact, however, the town lies o' 37′ 23′′ north of the tropic of Cancer. There was a famous well there, into which the sun was said to shine at the summer solstice, and to illuminate it in every part. In the time of the Romans three cohorts were stationed here,* and the town was of considerable importance. In the twelfth century of our era it was the seat of a bishop. Of its size in ancient days nothing definite can be said, but Arabic writers describe it as a flourishing town, and they relate that a plague once swept off 20,000 of its inhabitants. Aswân was famous for its wine in Ptolemaic times. The town has suffered greatly at the hands of the Persians, Arabs, and Turks on the north, and Nubians, by whom it was nearly destroyed in the twelfth century, on the south. The oldest ruins in the town are those of a Ptolemaic temple, which are still visible. Under Dynasties I-VI it was the frontier town of Egypt on the south, and was the starting point of all expeditions into the Sûdân. Under the XIIth Dynasty the frontier town on the south was Semna, in the Second Cataract, and Ãbu, or Sunt, lost some of its importance. At the close of the XXth Dynasty this town became once more the chief southern frontier city, and continued to be so until the rule of the Ptolemies.

It is interesting to observe that the Romans, like the British, held Egypt by garrisoning three places, viz., Aswân, Babylon (Cairo), and Alexandria. The garrison at Aswân defended Egypt from foes on the south, and commanded the entrance of the Nile; the garrison at Babylon guarded the end of the Nile valley and the entrance to the Delta; and the garrison at Alexandria protected the country from invasion by sea.

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