may add the Hebrew poet, the writer of the Book of Job. He had seen the buffalo, which the Egyptians kept for its flesh and milk, but could not teach to plough in a furrow (xxxix. 10), and the river-horse lying in the water under the leaves of the lotus (xl. 21), and the Egyptian conjurors playing with the crocodile (iii. 8, Hebr.), and he had examined that animal's hide (xli. 15). He had seen the ostrich outrunning the horseman in the Nubian desert (xxxix. 18), and the workmen let down by cords into the Nubian gold mines (xxviii. 4-6). He had reached Nubia, not by the Nile, but by the caravan route through Arabia (vi. 19); and in passing had gathered mineral oil from the oil-mountain, from which the petroleum flows, near the head of the Red Sea (xxix. 6); and had seen the writing on Mount Serbal in Sinai," with an iron pen and a leaden hammer chiselled into the rock for ever" (xix. 23, 24). This Hebrew poet's descriptions prove the places visited; and the time of his writing is known by his quoting from earlier writers and being quoted by a later. Page 284, line 27. Among other coins belonging to the island of Cyprus, we have one which seems to have been struck for Demetrius. It is of silver, and it weighs about eleven grains. De Luynes, Numism. On one side it bears a bearded head, with the Cypriote. lion's skin helmet of Alexander's successors. On the other side is a ram lying down. Beneath the ram are two Greek letters, "EY," for Evagoras, the nation's hero, a former king of Salamis, and around it are five Cypriote letters, which, under De Luynes's guidance may be read from right to left as Salamis. The letters in front of the head may be read as Demetrius (see Fig.). The statues and other sculptured works of art, which have been found in the island, show a remarkable variety of styles: Egyptian, Phœnician, Assyrian, Greek, and native Cypriote, bearing proof of the various races which at times had ruled in the island. The Cypriote inscriptions have not yet been deciphered, nor is the language understood. Page 348, line 9. One of these gateways, now in ruins, near the great temple of Karnak, deserves particular mention from the double use which has been made of its stones. It stands on the south side of the temple, on the road towards a smaller temple built by Ptolemy Philadelphus, and on that part of the road which, by the direction which it takes, may be said to belong to Ptolemy's temple, rather than to the old temple of Karnak. This ruined gateway bears on the face of it the hieroglyphics sculptured by Amunothph III.; but many of the fallen stones bear on the back the name of the sun-worshipping Haomra. This has been thought to show that the sun-worshipper lived before the time of Amunothph III., whereas in our history he stands as the satrap Thannyras, governing Egypt for the Persian king, Artaxerxes Longimanus, many centuries later. The difficulty can be explained only by supposing that these stones, after having been first used by Amunothph III. for a gateway, had been used a second time by the sun-worshipper; and thirdly, that the priests, under the Ptolemies, being at liberty, as we have seen, to restore the monumental honours to their right owners, had begun to rebuild Amunothph's gateway on the road to Ptolemy's temple, and had left it unfinished, to puzzle us and instruct us by its two sets of hieroglyphics. Page 230, line 34. Ichonuphys's knowledge of astronomy soon bore good fruit, when in B.C. 357 a reform of the Calendar was attempted by the introduction of an intercalary day every fourth year. How far it was adopted throughout Egypt we 430 do not know; probably not very generally; but an inscription at El Khargeh in the Great Oasis tells us that in that province it continued in use for four hundred years, that is, long after the same reform was again attempted at Canopus in B.C. 238, and even after the same reform was successfully introduced by the order of Augustus in B.C. 25. This inscription is dated by two calendars; at the beginning by Boeckh, the Julian Augustan calendar, which in B.C. 25 4957. fixed the moving new year's day at the 29th of August; and at the end by another calendar, which had fixed it at the 20th of November. The difference between the two is 83 days, which, when multiplied by 4, gives us 332, as the number of years by which the one calendar was older than the other. Thus to Iconuphys belongs the honour of proposing what is known by the name of the Julian Calendar, as is proved by an inscription of A.D. 68 in the emperor Galba's reign. END OF VOLUME FIRST. LONDON: PRINTED BY WM. CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, |
