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Call to prayer.

Note.—The hours of prayer—Adân—are proclaimed by the Mueddins (or Muezzins) from the minarets of the mosques five times a day, at periods that mark the division of the Eastern day: (1) Magrib, a little after sunset; (2) Asha, nightfall, an hour and a half after sunset; (3) Subh, daybreak; (4) Duhr, midday; (5) Asr, afternoon, an hour and a half before sunset.

Aîsha should be pronounced as if it were written ‘ay-ee-sha.’

Note.—The Muhammadans believe that, on the night following the burial of the dead, the two angels, Munkar and Nakir, with long Hair and glowing eyes, terrible teeth, and bearing iron flails in their hands, will visit the tomb, and catechise the dead as to the five articles of faith required of all true followers of the Prophet.

If approved, the soul, which is lingering with the body to await this preliminary trial, is allowed a foretaste of Paradise—otherwise, the body of the dead man is beaten down into hell with iron rods, and, seven times rejected, undergoes this torment seven times, as a preliminary taste of the eternal pain in store for him.

Ninety-nine serpents, with seven heads, called ‘Tannin,’ are then sent into his sepulchre. It is the office of these serpents to sting and bite, and blow up the bodies of the wicked until the Day of Judgment.

The Yusef Effendi oranges—‘burtukan’—from Benha, are much prized in the Cairene market.

Small silver coin, value 21/2d.

The water-bearers or ‘Sakka’ men in Cairo have hard work And very small pay; this fact they emphasise by their street cries: ‘Ya auwad Allah,’ ‘God will reward me.’

Camel-bag.

Pilgrim to Mecca.

Note.—It is perhaps a relic of the worship of Pasht or Bast at Bubastis, of which Herodotus gives us so glowing an account, that still each year, with the Caravan to Mecca, there goes a camel laden with cats, in the care of an old Dervish who is generally known as the ‘Father of the Cats.’

It is doubtless also with an eye to the preservation of the Caravan from a plague of rats and mice during their halts that poor puss is thus compelled to be an annual pilgrim. The goddess Pasht or Sekhet Bast was a daughter of the Sun, who warred continually against the demon of the night.

The orthodox length of a believer's turban is equal to the length of his body, in order that it may be used as the wearer's windingsheet.

The Bennu bird, Palm bird, or Phœnix, sacred to Ra, was said to raise itself to life at the end of every 500 years and to return to Heliopolis, where it was worshipped, bringing its ashes with it.

The top of the obelisk was coated with ‘Smu’ metal, probably burnished copper, till a comparatively recent date.

Note.—The translation of the hieroglyphics inscribed upon the obelisk of Heliopolis, which is embodied in the above poem, is taken from Brugsch's Egypt under the Pbaraobs, vol. i. chap. ix. p. 131.

‘The Way of the gods,’ or ‘the Holy Road,’ which ran from the west of the Heliopolitan nome, by old Babylon, across the plain to the Pyramids, was looked upon as full of mystery and haunted.

Chut was the ancient name of the Great Pyramid, built by Chufu or Cheops, B.C. 3733.

Ur was the ancient name of the second pyramid, built by Chephren, B.C. 3666.

A reference to Melik-el-Kamil, who, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, made an attempt to destroy one of the Pyramids, but, after months of toil, only succeeded in stripping off the covering of one of the sides.

Hormachu—the Harmachis of the Greeks—was one of the names of the Sphinx, = ‘Horus in the Horizon,’ probably the Sun at Midday.

In Thothmes' time the burial-ground round the Pyramids, already abandoned, was spoken of as Roset = ‘Door to the under-world.’

Isis.

See note, p. 25.

The Sun of the Midnight, the Sun in the East, the Sun in the West, under which forms Hormachu the Sphinx was worshipped.

Note.—The translation of the dream of Thothmes IV., upon which this poem is based, was made by S. Birch—Records of the Past, vol. xii. p. 143. But I have availed myself also of the fuller translation given by M. Brugsch, in his Egypt under the Pharaohs, vol. i. p. 415. The inscription from which these translations are made is found upon a granite tablet, about 14 feet high, placed before the breast of the great Sphinx at Gîzeh. Travellers to Egypt should not leave the Pyramids without a careful examination of this remarkable dream-tablet, set up in the month Athyr, and on the nineteenth day, in the year I of Thothmes IV., B.C. 1533.

Note.—The funerary inscription, of which this is a metrical rendering, is translated by M. Maspero, ‘Conference,’ p. 382.

M. de Rouget dates it as belonging to the twelfth dynasty. A similar invocation is seen at the tomb of Ameni Amenemhat, at Beni Hassan. Travellers will remember the famous Stele of Entef in the Gîzeh Museum, which is described in the first part of the poem.

The Egyptians believed that the shadow, or Ka, or double, of the deceased could not be fully alive in the next world unless an abundance of food was supplied it by way of offerings brought to the tomb-chamber on stated days.

Close by the Mêdûm Pyramid, built by the last king of the third dynasty, Seneferu, whose name is said to mean ‘maker of the good,’ there was discovered in 1872, by Mariette Bey, what are probably the oldest portrait-statues in the world. Visitors to the Gîzeh Museum will remember well the life-like expression, calm dignity of their faces, their marvellously fresh colouring, and their glistening eyes. These are the limestone statues of Ra Hotep, son of Seneferu, high priest of On, and commander of the king's warriors, and his wife the lady Nefert. They are seated side by side, Ra Hotep (favourite of the sun-god Ra) is of darker complexion, and sits bare to the waist, holding a roll of papyrus in his left hand to show that he is a man of education. Nefert, the beautiful, with fillet of riband starred with daisies in her hair, and with a banded necklet of pear-shaped jewels round her neck, is fairer of skin, and sits with folded hands, clad in a white garment close fitting above the breast. The eyes of both of these statues have a peculiar lustre, owing to the fact that behind the crystal of which they are composed, is a thin plate of silver to give light and life to them.

At the end of the three thousand years it was believed the soul would re-enter the body, and the dead would arise.

Note.—In the coffin of Uast-Em-Khebit, mother of Pinotem iii., last of the Priest-King dynasty of the Her-Hor line (twenty-first dynasty, 1100-1000 B.C.), were found not only the mummied funeral meats, but a very carefully embalmed gazelle, in a coffin shaped to its body's form.

The funeral tent of this Queen was also discovered, close by the coffin, in the great Deir el Bahari Royal-mummy find, 1881. It is of leathern patch-work, of squares of various colour. Amongst the ornaments of this funeral canopy or tent may be seen stars, daisies, scarabs, uraeus-disk basilisks, and a great hawk of gold; while on the frieze have been wrought, by way of ornament, gazelles crouching by palm clusters, having lotus garlands round their necks.

This unique and interesting object is after careful restoration preserved in the Gîzeh Museum, where also may be seen the mummied gazelle of the Egyptian Queen.

Note.—Ra-Sekenen, or Tȧȧ-Ken, = Tȧȧ, the Brave, was a Theban prince of the seventeenth dynasty, who, when peremptorily ordered by the Shepherd-King Apepi to reject the worship of Amon Ra in favour of the Hyksos god of the Delta, Set or Suteck, stoutly refused, and headed the revolt that eventually drove the Hyksos from Egypt, b.c. 1700. He fell in battle of terrible wounds that may be seen upon his forehead to-day.

Note.—The statue of Rameses ii., which now lies face upward above the ground, under the care of an Arab guardian, by the side of the road that runs from Bedrashên to Mît-Rahîneh, is one of the two colossal limestone statues which were placed in front of the Bull arena, or, as some say, in front of the Temple of Ptah or Vulcan, at Memphis, by Rameses ii., to commemorate his escape from death by fire after a banquet which his treacherous brother gave at Pelusium. This statue was discovered by Caviglia and Sloane in 1820, and was presented to the British Museum.

It used to lie face downward in a great ditch, and was covered by Nile inundation for part of every year. During the winter of 1886-7 Gen. Stevenson raised a subscription with a view to lifting it out of its grave and turning it face upward; he intrusted this difficult task to Major Arthur Bagnold, R.E., who borrowed a couple of 600-ton water rams and jacks from the fleet, and having first of all placed beneath the monster a solid staging of oaken beams, set the hydraulic rams to work, and by means of careful wedging lifted it inch by inch. It was my good fortune to be passing the place at the very moment when the rams were set to work, and Major Bagnold did me the honour of asking me to take a turn at the pumps first. The only effect produced was, that the rams, by their resistance, made the whole platform of oaken beams beneath the statue sink deeper into the ground. It was some time before a solid bottom was reached and the raising of the statue could begin. As a portrait-statue of the great Pharaoh, it is one of the most noteworthy in Egypt.

Memphis was spoken of in ancient times as ‘the town of the white wall.’

Note.—The name of ‘Ahmed the Carpenter’ is written in red paint or ink within one of the chambers of the Pyramid of Unas, last king of the fifth dynasty, called ‘Neferasu,’ which lies south-east of the Step Pyramid at Sakkarah.

It is generally believed that ‘Ahmed’ was the man who, about the year a.d. 820, broke his way into the great Pyramid at Gîzeh.

From the rising of this star, Sirius, the Egyptians calculated their Sothic year of 365 1/4 days.

At or near High Nile, the water assumes ared appearance. Cf. Sir George Airy's Notes on the Earlier Hebrew Scriptures, p. 59.

The large water-jars used by the women to carry water from the Nile.

The Coptic convent ‘of the Pulley,’ Dêr-el-Bakarah, said to have been founded by the Empress Helena. The patriarch has forbidden the practice, but alms are still solicited, from time to time, by sturdy monkish swimmers.

Note.—One of the most interesting of the northern group of Rock Tombs at Beni Hasân, which were all hewn at the time of Usertsen i. of the twelfth dynasty, b.c. 2433 to b.c. 2400, is the tomb of the son of the lady Hennu, Ameni Amenemhât, one of the feudal lords of Egypt, chief of the nome of Meh or Antinöe, and chief president of the prophets. In his youth he was sent to Ethiopia in the place of his father, who was too old for the task; he conducted successfully the warlike expedition, settled the frontiers of the country, and returned with much tribute and spoil. The pictures on the walls of the tomb, that are fading very fast, owing to the merciless treatment they have received at the hands of visitors, represent scenes on the battlefield, which may perhaps commemorate this expedition; but the pictures of Ameni's life on the farm, on the river, and in the hunting-ground, interesting as they are, with their details of Egyptian life when Usertsen was king, and specially of the part which women played at that time in domestic pursuits, pass into insignificance before the story of the man's life and character as given us by himself. This inscription on his tomb I have rendered into verse from the admirable translation given us by Mr. Wallis Budge, in his book The Nile, p. 168.

Note.—The recent discoveries by Flinders Petrie at Tel El-Amarna Show that there must have arisen there, about 1400 b.c., at the bidding of the young reformer-king, Chut-en-âten, or Khuenâten (‘the glory of the sun’), a city filled with men of new art, new social and new religious ideas.

The remains of the painted pavements of the palace, with their glowing colours, their unconventional treatment of natural forms, the remains of the glass-blowers' shops, the sculpture schools, the Greek vase fragments, bits of portrait sculpture, as fine in execution as sculpture of the best Greek time, all bespeak that in honour of the new religion of the Sun's-Disk-worshipping king and queen, there must have been gathered here the best art of the time from all parts of the world.

The Tel El-Amarna tablets and bi-lingual syllabaries found show that scribes were engaged to decipher the communications that passed between the courts of Khuenâten and the courts of Assyria. The architect who designed the Temple buildings was Bek, son of Men, who had worked under Amenophis iii. at Thebes, or Aptu, as it was called. Cf. Budge's Nile, p. 172.

Young Amen-Hotep iv. broke with the Theban priests and their worship of Amen-Ra to establish a new Thebes in this plain, and to honour the sun's disk as a spirit—the embodiment of the principle of life. He was not then more than eighteen years old, and died at the age of thirty. Within a generation after his death his whole city was swept away, but the young reformer's motto still survives, and is found constantly repeated. It is this, ‘Living in Truth.’

Sour milk.

Note.—At Abydos, which was approached by a canal, now disused, hard by the great burial-mound of Kom-es-Sultân, where it was said the head of Osiris was buried, may still be seen the beautiful bas-relief of Seti i. offering an image of the blind Truth or ‘Ma’ with the ostrich plume to Osiris; and in the corridor beyond the seven chapels may be seen Rameses ii., his son, as a lad, wearing the side lock, reciting the names of his seventy-six most illustrious ancestors—the names of whom are engraved in their cartouches upon the wall. This list of names is known as ‘the tablet of Abydos,’ and was discovered by Dümichen in 1864, during M. Mariette's excavation. It commences with Mena and ends with Seti i. Seti is seen offering incense and fire to the names, and is evidently the instructor of his son, who stands behind him.

At the commencement of all ceremonials in the temple of Abydos music seems to have been forbidden.

The ‘kulleh’ is the small water-bottle used for drinking from; the ‘bellas’ is the large water-jar for household use. The staple manufacture of Keneh is this pottery.

Note.—Behind the Chamber of the Golden Boat at Denderah is a little chapel, central of the five that fill up the temple's extremity, in the which is the niche that was the Holy of Holies. ‘Here,’ says Mariette Bey, ‘the King alone could penetrate; here, hidden from all eyes, was the mysterious emblem of the temple, a large sistrum of gold.’

The temple, dedicated to Hathor, and built in late Ptolemaic and Roman times, was, as is clear from the wall-sculptures, dedicated to her as the embodiment of the Platonic doctrine of the Good, the Beautiful, the True.

The sistrum was supposed, by its sound, to be able to banish Typhon and all malignant powers of the air; and to set forth by symbol that men should always be up and doing, and actively bent on the business of life.

On entering the sanctuary of the temple, the King is represented as holding forward the present to the goddess,—a little statue of a female, kneeling in a vase or basket, her head crowned with an ostrich plume. This is the image of Truth called ‘Ma.’ As he presents it he utters these words:—

‘I offer to thee Truth, O Goddess of Denderah, for Truth is thine own work, for thou art Truth itself.’

One of Ramses' titles of honour,=‘Favourite of Ammon.’

One of the forms of the Sun-god Ra, as warrior-god of Light.

At Hermonthis, called the ‘An of the South’—modern Erment —stood a great temple to Monthu, the warrior-god of Light, the ancient tutelar Lord of Thebes.

Note.—This, the most remarkable of old Egyptian epics, was written by a court poet of the nineteenth dynasty, Pentaur, in the seventh year of Rameses ii., b.c. 1326, and describes the singlehanded combat of the great Pharaoh against the Hittites. Its text is preserved on the walls of Abydos, Karnak, Luxor, the Ramesseum and Ipsambul. But it is to the Ramesseum we turn for illustrations of the poem.

Mariette Bey tells us: ‘The scene is laid in Syria, on the banks of a river which everything seems to point out as the Orontes. Rameses is present in person, and comes fully armed, to dispute possession of the country, designated under the generic name of the Khetas. Kadesh is the nearest town. Through a concourse of circumstances, which do not reflect credit on the Egyptian generals, Rameses finds himself surrounded by his enemies. The soldiers who formed the escort have taken flight. Rameses stands alone, and no one is with him.’

With unreflecting valour he throws himself among the chariots. He kills the chiefs of the ‘vile Khetas,’ forces their troops to recross the river in hot haste, and by personal courage turns the threatened rout into a complete victory. This brilliant feat of arms is what the first pylon of the Ramesseum commemorates.

On one side Rameses is seen precipitating himself into the thickest of the fight. The enemy fly in terror; some are crushed under the feet of the horses and under the chariot-wheels; some lie dead on the ground, pierced with arrows shot by the king's own hand; others again leap into the river and are drowned. On the opposite side the king is represented seated on his throne. His officers come forward tendering their congratulations; but it is with reproofs the king receives them. ‘Not one among you,’ he exclaims, ‘has behaved well in thus deserting me, and leaving me alone in the midst of the enemy. The princes and the captains did not join hands with me in fight. I have put to flight thousands of nations, and I was all alone.’

On the interior facade of the second pylon, one may see, by the evening light, the same king in the thick of the battle. Here Grabatousa, the armour-bearer of the Prince of Khita, falls pierced by the arrows of the king; there Rabsounna, captain of the archers, meets with the same fate. The Orontes lies in the path of the Khita, who fly in disorder. Upon one of the pylons one notices the square camp of the Egyptians, surrounded by its wall of shields, which the Egyptian warriors have placed around it. The life of the camp servants, resting by their baggage, comes before us. The asses, some of them giving a little trouble, are loose within the enclosure. Pharaoh's tent is seen in the midst of the camp. The favourite lion ‘Tearer-in-pieces,’ stalks about, and near it is the shrine of the great gods of Egypt. When one reads the poem of Pentaur, one realises that all this last picture represents the encampment of the first legion of Ammon, the bodyguard of the king, that gave way so disastrously on the great day of battle.

Another wall-sculpture gives us a spirited picture of the battle at the critical moment of Rameses' single-handed victory. The river Orontes runs round two sides of the picture, and the flight of the Hittites' horses and chariots towards the stream, the falling into it of the pursued, as crocodiles fall into the water, is graphically pourtrayed. A copy of this battle-scene is given in Eber's Egypt, vol. ii. p. 279.

The papyrus from which this poem was originally translated is known as the third Sallier papyrus, one of several that were purchased from an Egyptian sailor by M. Sallier of Aix, in Provence. It is now in the British Museum. It is a copy of an earlier document. It was seen by Champollion in 1833, but to Vicomte de Rouget belongs the credit of having first attempted a full translation of it, in the year 1856.

Mr. Goodwin translated it in 1858, and Professor Lushington's translation of it is given in vol. ii. of Records of the Past, p. 65. Henry Brugsch Bey, after comparing the various texts of the poem on the monuments, and papyri fragments, and having carefully studied the well-known papyrus of the British Museum, has produced a very full translation, a portion of which is here metrically rendered.

Readers should compare Brugsch Bey's translation (History of the Pharaohs, vol. ii. p. 53) with that of Professor Lushington.

Cf. Rawnsley's ‘Notes for the Nile,’ among The Hymns of Ancient Egypt, p. 207 (W. Heinemann: London).

The serpent ‘Āpepi,’ or Apophis, as the spirit of evil and destroyer of the light, is seen figured in many tombs, notably in the tomb of Seti i., called Belzoni's.

Visitors to the tomb of Rameses iii.—Bruce's tomb—will remember the chairs, harpers, unguents, etc. referred to.

Note.—Hatasu, or Hatshepset, daughter of Thothmes i., sister of Thothmes ii. and Thothmes iii., b.c. 1600, was one of the most remarkable of the Egyptian queens.

Brugsch tells us in his Egypt under the Pharaohs, vol. i. p. 349, that scarcely had her royal brother and husband closed his eyes, when the proud queen threw aside her woman's veil, and appeared in all the splendour of Pharaoh as a born king. For she laid aside her woman's dress, clothed herself in man's attire, and adorned herself with the insignia of royalty. Visitors to Deir-el-Bahari will have noticed the unconventional style of her terraced Temple, and will remember the sculptured scenes that depict the return of the expedition from the land of Punt; will have noted the apes in the rigging of the vessels, the camphor trees, root and all, in huge baskets, which are being unloaded. The construction of this marvellous temple was intrusted to an architect called Senmut, who was much honoured by the queen. Those who have examined the fragments of the fallen obelisk, which he set up in honour of ‘Father Amen’ at Karnak, will have noted the proud and beautiful face of the queen engraved beneath the pyramidion.

This obelisk and its sister, still standing, respectively, 93 feet and 105 feet high, were hewn in the Syene quarries and brought down to Thebes in seven months. Their beauty of workmanship was as remarkable as their size.

Memorial scarabæi tell us that Amenoph iii. speared 210 lions with his own hand in his hunting expeditions in the land of Naharain.

The Sphinx ‘dromos’ that ran between Karnakand Luxor.

Apé, Apts, Aptu, or Aptet, was the old name of Thebes to east of river, comprising Karnak and Luxor.

Amenoph iii. built the Temple at Luxor, b.c. 1500, on foundation walls that rose right out of the river.

The ancient name of the hill to the west of the necropolis at Thebes, at whose feet the city of the embalmers lay.

Note.—The statues which represent Amenhotep iii. in a sitting position, having at their feet statues of his wife Mut-em-ua and of his mother Thi, stand 22 feet apart. The most northerly—the Vocal Memnon—partially destroyed by earthquake, b.c. 27, was repaired by the Emperor Septimius Severus. They are 62 feet high, were carved each out of single blocks of red-brown sandstone grit, probably in the quarries of Jebel Silsileh, floated down here at high Nile, and placed in front of a great temple, now destroyed, b.c. 1500-1465.

The work was executed by a certain Amenhotep, surnamed Hui, son of Hapoo and the Lady Atoo, whose granite portrait-statue is preserved in the Gîzeh Museum. From the inscription on that statue we know the history of this remarkable man. Speaking of these Colossi, he says: ‘I caused to be built eight ships; then the statues were carried up the river, and placed in their sublime building. They will last as long as Heaven.’

‘I declare to you, who shall come here after us, that of the people assembled for the building, all were under me. They were full of ardour, their heart was moved with joy, they raised a shout, they praised the gracious God. Their landing in Thebes was a joyful event.’

Cf. Brugsch's Egypt under the Pharaohs, vol. i. p. 427.

Visitors to the Gîzeh Museum will remember the beautiful limestone head of this queen. Her portrait is well preserved in her tomb at Thebes. Cf. V. Stuart's Nile Gleanings, Plates xx. xxi.

The frantic dance of the dervishes, often performed at weddings.

Shrill cries of joy made by women hired for the occasion.

The Judge. On such occasions the evidence of four distinct accusers was necessary to procure conviction.

The village schoolmaster and lay reader of the Koran.

Hagur or Jebel Silsileh.

The Nile—Hâpi—was worshipped here. Rameses ii. reestablished the Nile festival, and set up a temple at this point to the river-god.

Founded by Ptolemy vii.—Philometor, b.c. 170 to 146, and dedicated to Horus and Sebek.

Ps. cxxxix. 12.

The old name for the island of Assuan was Abu=the Elephant.

Champollion, by means of this name on the obelisk at Philae, since carried away to Corfe Castle, Dorset, discovered an important key to hieroglyphics.

The Blemyes, an ancient Ethiopic nation, had the privilege of conveying each year, from the sanctuary of Philae, the image of the goddess Isis to visit their temples in the land of Nub. Philae, after the desertion of Abydos, became the centre of Osirian worship. It was called ‘The Holy Island.’

Horus is seen listening to music at his mother's knee, and afterwards sowing grain.

Within the painted portico of the large temple may be seen a credence table and aumbry with the cross upon them. The Copts under Abbot Theodore appear to have taken possession of the island at the end of the fifth century. Travellers will remember the Christian basilica north-west of the temple.

The most solemn oath by which an Egyptian could swear was ‘By Him who sleeps in Philae,’ being an allusion to the reputed burial of the body of Osiris on the island.

Strabo saw the sacred hawk of Ethiopia when he visited Philae. It was then nigh sick unto death.

The worship of Isis lingered at Philae as late as a.d. 453, 74 years after the edict of Theodosius, which abolished the Egyptian religion elsewhere.