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in the British Museum with the name of his father Rameses II. cut upon his shoulder. He wears an apron round his waist,

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which is made to stick out by a frame fastened under it like a modern lady's hoop (see Fig. 103). Of Oimenepthah II. we have a seated statue in the same museum, which shows a change in the sculptor's art from the grand simplicity of Rameses II. to a greater attempt at detail in the anatomy, and to a weakness in expression.

(47) These kings were followed by RAMESES III. (see Fig. 104), whose long reign recalled the glory of the great Rameses. He built a new temple or palace in Thebes on the western side of the river, in a spot which now bears the Arabic name of Medinet Abou, or more correctly, Medina Tabou, the city of Thebes (see plan, Fig. 105). The courtyard now in ruins is one of the finest in Egypt (see Fig. 106). The portico of this new temple betrays a change in religious opinions, and a wish to mark more strongly the separation between the priesthood and the people, between the clergy and the laity. The

Fig. 103.

portico of the earlier temple at Rebek was open to view (see Fig. 74). Whatever ceremonies were performed under it could be seen by all who stood in front of it. But it was not so in this temple of Medinet Abou. Though it was in other Fig. 104. respects on the same plan, it was closed in front by a low wall, which ran from column to column, so that the doings of the priests within could no longer

Young's

pl. 15.

pl. 134.

be seen by the less holy laity without. Here the painted sculptures on the walls proclaim the king's victories over distant and neighbouring nations, and his triumphal and religious processions at home. In one of the Hierogl. sculptures we see the king sitting in his chariot, Denon, after his victory over the Arabs, while his attendants are boastfully counting and writing down the thousands of hands that they have brought home as trophies of the enemies that they had slain in battle. The handcuffed prisoners who stand by are guarded by the Egyptian bowmen. In another place the king under a canopy, the god Chem, the bull Apis, and the ark, are borne along on men's shoulders, in a religious procession, accompanied by priests and soldiers. The procession of Rameses III., sitting under a canopy, and carried along on men's shoulders, helps us to the derivation of an English word. This canopy, we learn from a remark of Horace, was the frame upon which was stretched a gauze net to keep off the gnats and flies; though the gauze is not shown by the sculptor because of its transparency. Horace mentions

the shame felt by the Roman Epod. ix. soldiers in the service of the

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16. luxurious Antony and Cleopatra, at having the royal gnat-gauze carried among the military standards of Rome. From Conops, a Gnat, it was named Conopium, and hence the word Canopy. The little regard which the Egyptians paid to regularity in their buildings is well shown by an addition which Rameses III. made to the great temple of Karnak. He broke down part of the wall on the west side of the front courtyard, and in the gap he built a small temple, half within the court and half outside (see Fig. 107). It has square towers, a courtyard, a portico, and inner

Fig. 105.

rooms of its own, but is in size only one twenty-fourth part of the temple of Karnak itself.

(48) By the inroads of Rameses III. through Palestine.

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into Syria and other parts of Asia, the power of the Philistines must have been again weakened. These warlike and well-armed people on the coast had 1 Samuel, hitherto been able to debar the Israelites from the use of iron for weapons; but during the reign of Saul they

ch. xiii. 19.

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were no longer too powerful to be met in battle. If the Egyptian army now occupied any part of the country, no other mention of it is made in the Bible than the ch. xxiii. quarrel of one of the soldiers with a Hebrew 21. peasant, though a

2 Samuel,

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1 Samuel, little earlier we ch. xxx. 11. meet with a poor Egyptian as slave to an Amalekite and a starving wanderer in the land. The Egyptian troops, indeed, were probably often wanted at home. We gather from a few hints among the inscriptions that the sway of these great Theban kings was not wholly undisputed by the rest of Egypt. The trouble seems to have come from the cities on the eastern half of the Delta, where the Phenicians settled freely for purposes of trade, where the Phenician Shepherds may have left behind them a mixed race, and where the language spoken and the gods worshipped were not wholly the same as those either of the Thebaid or the western half of the Delta. Thothmosis III. styles himself conqueror of Mendes, showing that he was called upon to enforce obedience in that city within his own dominions. That was followed

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Fig. 107.

by the ill-treatment of the Israelites under Moses in the same district. Then Thothmosis IV. styles himself Lord of Mendes. Amunothph III. also says he is Lord of Mendes, and particularly favoured by Pasht, the cat-headed goddess of

Bubastis. A little later the Greek settlers are driven by force of arms out of the west of the Delta. Then Oimenepthah I. styles himself Lord of San or Tanis, as if that city had claimed to be independent; and afterwards Rameses III. uses the same title. These notices are slight, but they are the only forerunners that we can find of the successful rebellion of the castern cities a century later, when Thebes yielded its unwilling obedience to Bubastis. For the west of the Delta it is even yet more clear that the people bore no love to the Theban kings. In the numerous tombs of the priests and nobles of Memphis, which have been opened in the neighbourhood of the pyramids-tombs of all ages-in none of them are the inscriptions dated by the reigns of the great kings of Thebes.

(49) The calendar on the walls of Medinet Abou shows that the Egyptian knowledge of astronomy had as Egypt. yet arrived at very little exactness. We there read Inscript. that the festival of the day of the Dog-star was the 2nd Series, pl. 57. first day of the month of Thoth, as it had been declared to be on the walls of the Memnonium one hundred years earlier, in the reign of Rameses II. Hence we see that

they had not yet discovered the want of a leap year, or remarked that the new year's day had become a month earlier between these two reigns; and we must not trust to either calendar as the foundation of an exact calculation in chronology.

(50) The lid of the sarcophagus in which Rameses III. was buried is now in the museum at Cambridge. It is a slab of syenite, from the quarries near the first cataract. On it (see Fig. 108) is the king's figure sculptured in the form of a god between two goddesses, Isis and Nephthys; and as if he had himself on his

Fig. 108.

death been changed into a god with three characters, he has on

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