[457] Each generation contained a ‘Piromis, son of a Piromis.’ The word, made equivalent to Kalos k’ agathos (= galantuomo), Pe-Rome, the man, opposed to Pe-Neter, the god.

[458] Mela has been blamed for repeating Herodotus without understanding him. When he states that the sun twice set at the point where it now rises (‘solem bis jam occidisse unde oritur’), he probably means that the greater light left to the west the zodiacal sign which presided at its rising.

[459] The word at first applied probably to the commander-in-chief. Wilkinson’s day derived it from Phra (pa-Ra), the sun; now it is explained Per-áo, the Great House, in the sense of ‘Sublime Porte.’

[460] Antiquité des Races Humaines. Paris, 1862.

[461] The ‘black land,’ opposed to Tesher, the ‘red land’ (Edom, Idumæa, Erythræa), the wilds of North-Western Arabia. It is also called on the monuments A’in (Æan in Pliny) and Ta-mera (Mera, Tomera), the ‘inundation region.’ Another old name, Aeria, is from יאר, Yior, the Nile. Kemi must not be confounded with Khem, Chemmis, universal nature, the generative and reproductive principle—Pan. When Q. Curtius writes that Chemmis ‘umbraculo maxime similis est habitus,’ I would change the first word to ‘umbilico.’ The stepped cone in the Elephanta Caves exactly explains the latter.

[462] Hecatæus and Anaximander divided the globe into Europe (Ereb, Gharb, the West) and Asia (Asiyeh, the East). Their successors added Libya (Africa), a term derived from the Libu or Ribu tribes; and the Father of History a most insufficient fourth—the Nilotic Delta. The latter, however, is ethnologically correct: Egypt is neither Africa nor Asia, but a land per se.

[463] In Homer, Ægyptus always applies to the Nile (Od. xiv. 268). Manetho makes it the name of a king, Sethos = Seti I. M. Maspero proposes as a derivation of the word, Ha Kahi Ptah (the land of the god Ptah). Hence the Biblical Pathros = Ptah-land (Ezek. xxix. 14). Pathyris, the western side of Thebes, and the western Provinces generally, may have named the πάταικοι (Herod. iii. 37), the obscene dwarfs who made Cambyses laugh.

[464] Herodotus (vii. 66) specifies the Arians, a racial name then synonymous with the Medes. This is not the place to enter upon the subject of Aria’s enormous development.

[465] As a specimen of the roots—which are most remarkable when they consist of single consonants, whose reduplication made the earliest words—take ‘papa’ and ‘mamma.’ The former is from the Egyptian pa-pa (root p), to produce, the original idea of the begetter; and the latter is ma-ma (root m), to carry, be pregnant, bear. Mut becomes mátá, μήτηρ, mater, mother: Mer (a-mor), love; meran (morior), die, and more (mare), the sea. In ‘Semitic’ we have má, Heb. and Arab. má, water; and a long array of other words (as ia, yes, yea; and na, nay) too extensive for notice.

[466] Characterised chiefly by post- instead of pre-positions, by additions to the verb which make it causal, reflective, and so forth, and by the peculiar form of sentences. Examples: the Finn-Ugrian-Magyar and the Turk-Mongol-Tartar, both probably deriving from the ancient Sakas = Scythians.

[467] To Aryan I much prefer the older term ‘Iranian’; Iran (Persia), which once extended from the Indus to the Mediterranean, being one of the great centres where the ‘Aryo’-Egyptian element of language developed itself, and where a typical race is still found. Nor is there much objection to ‘Turanian,’ Turan being the non-Iranian regions to the east, Tartary and China. But ‘Semitic,’ which contains a myth and a theory, should be changed into ‘Arabian.’ Egypto-Arabic attained its purest and highest development in the Peninsula; Hebrew is a northern and somewhat barbarous dialect; Syriac is a north-western offspring; Galla, a western; and so forth.

[468] For whose erection every ‘authority’ gives his or her own date. Mr. Proctor’s calculation, based upon the precession of the equinoxes, is b.c. 3350. It appears to me that we also obtain the date from the position of the polar star (α Draconis), which looked down the axis of the great entrance-passage before this long tube was blocked up. We may thus assume between b.c. 3440 and b.c. 3350.

[469] Records of the Past, ii. 120; and Trans. Bibl. Soc. i. ii. 383–85.

[470] Brugsch, vol. ii. chap. xiv.

[471] One nome (Tanis) carried a crescent and one star, others had two and three of the latter. The emblem passed over to the Byzantine Empire, and now we see upon the Egyptian flag the crescent and Seb, the five-rayed star. It is thus distinguished from the Turkish, which has seven rays.

[472] See chap. viii.

[473] The popular conception of the Noachian Deluge is a study. There have been millions of local and partial floods; but wherever and whenever a traveller finds the legend of an inundation he incontinently applies it to ‘the Flood.’ Dr. Livingstone could not refrain from so doing at the petty Lake Dilolo. And it is to be noted that the Egyptians, accustomed to annual freshets, utterly ignored one general cataclysm as held by the Greeks.

[474] ‘Nuhu’ is found in the Nahrai tomb, Beni Hasan (Osburn, i. 239); other names are Noum, Nouf, and Nef.

[475] Amun Ra (Hephæstus, Vulcan), the veiled Osiris, the ‘Hidden One of Thebes,’ is thus addressed in a papyrus:—

Another describes him as ‘Maker of all things; whose beginning was the beginning of the world; whose forms are various and manifold; the first to exist; the one only Being, and the Parent of all who live.’

[476] Mr. Froude metaphysicises when he tells us that the religion of Egypt is the adoration of physical forces. Mankind do not worship abstractions; they begin (and mostly end) by adoring man.

[477] Blind because she saw with insight, not physical vision. Her eyes are hidden by blinkers or ‘goggles.’ Her usual name is Ma, and her ideograph is the ell-measure.

[478] Even ‘God save the King’ must be referred back to them.

[479] It is an aorist from ‘Havah;’ so φύσις from φύω, and natura from nascor. Mystically, Ya is the past, Ha the present, and Vah the future.

[480] My fellow-traveller, the Rev. W. Robertson Smith, has neglected the derivation of the ‘Prophet’ grade by Jewry from Egypt; his interesting volume (The Old Testament, &c.) wants more Egyptianism. The Prophets of Nile-land had their merits; they foretold that Pharaoh Necho’s Suez Canal would be more useful to strangers than to natives.

[481] The High Priest’s robe in Jewry had 366 bells, symbolising the days of the Sothic-sidereal year. In the times of the early Pharaohs, the ‘Queen of the New Year’ appeared in coincidence with the beginning of the solar year. The Sothic æra had been fixed from observations before Thut-mes III. (Eighteenth Dynasty, circ. b.c. 1580).

[482] Yet the end of chap. xix. is distinctly teleological. Were there two Jobs?

[483] Abraham, the legendary forefather of the Hebrews, was a Chaldæan from Ur of the Chaldees. On the east bank of the Euphrates lies Uru-ki, Erech, or Warká, fronted by Ur, Uru, or Mughayr: the Bedawin still call the latter ‘Urhha’ in memory of ‘Ur.’ Thus Abraham was a hill-man from the harsh and rugged regions fringing Southern Armenia. Hence the ‘Jewish face,’ with its strongly marked features and its wealth of hair and beard, appears everywhere in the sculptures of ancient Babylonia and Persia. Hence, too, the superficial observation that the Afghans and hill-tribes west of the Indus are Jews because they have the typical Jewish look. The reason is that all are derived from the same ethnic centre, a great watershed of race.

[484] In this section of the nineteenth century three popular crazes are producing a literature of vigorous growth. The first is the Shakespearian; not Shakespeare, but Bacon, or some other Palmerstonian pet, wrote Shakespeare. The second, apparently a by-blow of the Book of Mormon, is the descent of John Bull from the ‘Lost Tribes,’ who were never lost. The third is the Pyramid craze; and the rough common sense of the public has embodied it in ‘the Inspired British Inch’: these Pyramidists mostly forget that the Pyramid is one of three greater and some seventy lesser items which form the cemetery of Memphis.

[485] Yet it is remarkable, observes Brugsch (i. 212), that from the earliest ages the curse of the Typhonic gods clings to gold. So Plutarch (Isis and Osiris) tells us that the worshippers were directed not to wear the noble metal; and this still is a general rule in El-Islam.

[486] Silver, the ‘next folly of mankind,’ says Pliny (Nat. Hist. xxxiii. 31), showing his own, and rivalling Horace’s ‘aurum irrepertum et sic melius situm.’ Strange to say, neither old Egypt nor Assyria had a coinage, which Herodotus (i. 94) and a host of other writers attribute to the Lydians, the forefathers of the Etruscans. Its representative in the Nile Valley was the ring-money, which extended to ancient Britain, and which is still preserved in many parts of Africa. The golden ‘manillas’ discovered at Dali (Idalium) in Cyprus, where the breaks of the circle are adorned with the heads of animals, lions and asps, show what the now meaningless thickening of these parts originally meant.

[487] ‘Lead is also united by the aid of white lead (tin); white lead with white lead by the agency of oil’ (Pliny, xxxiii. 30).

[488] The Captivity of Hans Stade, p. 145.

[489] Properly speaking, to ‘damascene’ is confined to ‘grit’ or inlaid iron or steel, the word evidently deriving from Damascus, once so famous for Swords. Johnson (Dict., Longmans, 1805) explains the word ‘damask,’ ‘linen or silk woven in a manner invented at Damascus, by which part, by a various direction of the threads, exhibits flowers or other forms.’ Percy (Metal. p. 185) inclines towards ‘Damascus’; but he suggests that the ‘word “damask” applied to steel may have been derived, not from the place of manufacture but from a fancied resemblance between the markings in question and the damask patterns on textile fabrics.’

[490] This process resembles our niello (nigellum) inlaying. The oldest composition contained most silver and no lead. Percy (Metallurgy, p. 23) gives us its history: the first treatise by Theophilus, alias Rugerus, a monk of the early eleventh century, was translated by Robert Hendrick (London, 1847).

[491] Plutarch relates (De Isid. 2) of Ochus (Thirty-first Dynasty), who, amongst other acts of tyranny, caused the sacred bull Apis to be made roast beef, that he was represented in the Catalogue of Kings by a Sword.

[492] Ḳrsha, Krasher, or Krershra. The determinative is a squatting archer with bow and arrows. Marvellous to say, Brugsch (i. 51) mentions ‘clubs, axes, bows and arrows,’ utterly neglecting the Sword.

[493] Egyptian national names give derivation to, but do not derive from, Greek. According to Pollux (vii. 71), however, Hemitybion is Egyptian, evidently corrupted.

[494] The horse, apparently unknown to the First Dynasty of Memphis, was familiar to the Second. Mr. Gladstone (Primer of Homer, p. 97: Macmillan, 1878) supposes that the animal came from Libya or Upper Egypt; but the African horse probably originates from Asia. The first illustrations of horses and chariots are found at Eileithyias, temp. Aah-mes, Amos, Amosis, b.c. 1500.

[495] The pole-axe was three feet long, the handle being two; the blade varied from ten to fourteen inches, and below it was a heavy metal ball, some four inches in diameter, requiring a powerful arm. The club in the British Museum, armed with wooden teeth, is not represented on the monuments, and probably belonged to some barbarous tribe.

[496] I have already discussed the Stone Age in Egypt and in Africa (chap. iii.). We must not, however, determine it to be pre-metallic without further study. Herodotus first notices it when he tells us that the Ethiopians in the army of Xerxes used stone-tipped arrows.

[497] I cannot but suspect the word of being a congener of our ‘chop.’ Mr. Gerald Massey, author of A Book of the Beginnings, favoured me with his opinion upon the ‘scymitar Khopsh.’ He identifies it with the hinder thigh (, Shepsh, or , Khepsh), of the ‘old Genitrix’ of the Typhonian type, Kfa or Kefa (force, power, might); the Goddess of the Great Bear and the place of birth. Hence the (Ru) or ‘mouth’ of the Sword came to be synonymous with the ‘edge’ of the Sword (Genesis xxxiv. 36). In the Denderah zodiac, the central figure, the ‘old Genitrix,’ holds the Khopsh-chopper or falchion with the right hand. The ‘thigh of Khepsh’ is also the Egyptian rudder-oar. The Great Bear Khepsh is one of the earliest measures of the Seasons: the Chinese still say that at nightfall the ‘handle of the northern bushel’ (tail of Ursa Major) points east in spring, south in summer, west in autumn, and north in winter.

Mr. Gerald Massey’s two fine volumes have secured him, and will secure him, much bitter and hostile criticism from the many-headed who are lynx-eyed as to details while they overlook the general scheme. His object has been to show that religion and literature, science and art, originated in Egypt; and here he is undoubtedly right. Relying upon the self-evident fact that the language of the hieroglyphs contains ‘Semitic’ as well as ‘Aryan’ roots and derivative forms, he traces these throughout the languages of the world. Whether we judge his work conclusive or not, we cannot but admire and applaud the vast reading and research which he has brought to bear upon the most interesting subject.

And in another way Mr. Massey has done good. He has uttered a lively and emphatic protest against the Sanskritists and their over-weening pretensions. In vol. ii. (p. 56) he shows how shallow is the conclusion that Ophir was in India because the produce brought back by Solomon’s fleets had, according to Professor Max Müller, Sanskrit or Dravidian names. ‘Koph’ the ape is Kapi in Sansk.; but it is pure Egyptian, Kapi, whence the Gr. κῆπ-ος or κῆβ-ος. ‘Tukkiyim’ (peacocks) resembles the Toki of Tamil and the Togei of Malabar; but the root is evidently the Egyptian Tekh or Tekai, a symbolical bird. ‘Shen habim’ (teeth of elephant = tusks) may derive from the Sansk. Ibau, an elephant, but the latter is originally Ab in Egyptian. These erroneous views, coming from an authoritative source, are at once accepted, copied into popular books, and find their way round the world, to the confusion of true knowledge. They make it our hapless fate to learn, unlearn, and relearn. See ‘ape’ in Smith’s Dict. of the Bible, and, to quote one in dozens, the Trans. Anthrop. Soc. p. 435, May 1882,—‘the name for ape in “Kings” and in Greek authors, both adopted from Sanskrit.’

Mr. Massey unfortunately has not studied Arabic, hence many views which will hardly find acceptance. In interpreting the hieroglyphics he has wisely preferred the ideographic symbolism and the determinatives which, countless ages ago, preceded the phonetic and alphabetic forms.

[498] For further notice of the Kopis, see chap. xi.

[499] Also v. to decapitate: the Coptic form is Sebi or Sefi.

[500] Bunsen, v. 758.

[501] Bunsen’s Egypt, v. 429. According to Castor, the two Swords pointed at the throat of a kneeling man was the priest’s stamp denoting pure beasts, fit for sacrifice. He has noted that this survival points distinctly to human sacrifice in older days.

[502] Yet the tombs at Beni Hasan date 900 years before the popular era of the Trojan war.

[503] Monum. 262 fol., plates 11, 15.

[504] Rosellini shows a long tapering blade with a mid-rib, apparently sunken, and a raised surface on each side. The length is divided into five parts, smooth and hatched (?).

[505] The Somal have retained three other notable peculiarities of ancient Egypt; the wig (worn by the old Nilotes); the Uts () or wooden head-stool acting pillow, which further north was a half-cylinder of alabaster finely carved; and the ostrich-feather head-gear The latter was a symbol of Truth among the old Egyptians, because, says Hor Apollo, the wing-feathers are of equal length. The Romans adopted it as a military decoration. ‘Your courage has not yet given your helmet wherewithal to shade your face from the burning sun,’ say the Kurds, who add to the crest a new feather for every foe slain in fight. The Somal, after victory or murder, stick the white variety in the mop-head. We still use the phrase ‘a feather in his cap.’ The ‘Prince of Wales’ feather’ is an Egyptian ideograph of Truth. Mr. Gerald Massey seems to think that Wilkinson’s ‘Thmei’ (II. chap. viii.) is ‘only a backward rendering of the Greek “Themis”‘; that the feathers are ‘Shu’ (), and that the goddess is ‘Ma’ (), or ‘Mati.’ But surely the root of Themis would be in ‘Ta-Ma,’ the Goddess (of Truth)?

[506] Compare Raa, Heb. and Ar., ‘he saw’; Gr. ὁράω, and Lat. Ra-dius.

[507] Colonel A. Lane Fox remarks that the groove which is constant in these Caucasian blades is a little out of the central line, and does not correspond on each side, an alternation showing that it is derived from the ogee form. I have suggested that the idea arose from the arrow-head ‘bellied on a twist,’ and have figured the weapon in the next page (fig. 170).

[508] Bronze, &c. p. 298.

[509] Chap. v.

[510] Returning from the exploration of Harar (1853), I sent a small collection of Somali weapons to the United Service Institution.

[511] The form is accurately preserved in the formidable Afghan ‘Charay’ or one-edged knife.

[512] A Critical Inquiry, &c.

[513] I have shown that the heraldic Sword in the East preserves this double sword-knot (chap. vii.).

[514] The Baghirmi, according to Denham, adore a long lance of peculiar construction: this spear-worship is also practised by the Marghi and the Musghu. It extended from ancient Rome to certain of the Pacific Isles; while the Fijians worship the war-club. At Baroda in Gujarát superstitious honours are paid to the Gaekhwar’s golden cannons with silver wheels.

[515] English and Styrian razors are also largely imported.

[516] Chap. viii.

[517] Athenæus (i. 27) speaks of the Thracian dance in arms, ‘men jumping up very high with light springs, and using Swords.’ At last one of them strikes another, so that it seemed to everyone that the man was wounded.

[518] Marocco, page 66 (Milano, Treves, 1876).

[519] Hence the ardent desire of the Abyssinians, when first visited by Europeans, to obtain civilised Swords. Father F. Alvarez (Hakluyt Soc. 1881), who lived in Abyssinia between 1520 and 1527, shows the Barnagais (Bahr-Negush, or sea-ruler) begging the Portuguese ambassador for his rich Sword and ornaments, ‘as the great lords have few Swords’ (chap. xxx.). Prester John (the Negush or Emperor) displays ‘five bundles of short Swords with silver hilts,’ taken from the Moslems (chap. cxiii.). The King of Portugal sends as a present to Prester John ‘first a gold Sword with a rich hilt,’ and a good fencer, Estevam Pallarte.

[520] Anthrop. Coll. p. 184.

[521] Gorilla-land, p. 227.

[522] Quenching in oil or grease instead of water is a common practice. The workman still ‘adds to the water a thin cake of grease, or pours over it hot oil, through which the steel must pass before it enters the water, for by these means it is prevented from acquiring cracks and flaws.’ (Beckmann, loc. cit. ii. 330.)

[523] Specimens of all these weapons are in the Lane-Fox Collection, Nos. 1088 to 1100.

[524] The Cataracts of the Congo, p. 234.

[525] I have noticed that arrant humbug, the celebrated ‘golden axe’ which, in 1880–81, caused the last ‘Ashantee scare’ (To the Gold Coast for Gold, ii.). The thing sent to England was certainly not the great fetish which is held to be the national Palladium. Another memento of the last Ashantee war, ‘King Koffee’s umbrella, an article of prodigious proportions, and of gaudy material,’ only returned to where it was made. The type of the latter may be seen in most Italian market-places, shading the old women’s fruits and vegetables; and Manchester, I believe, had the honour of building it.

[526] Through the Dark Continent, i. 21.

[527] Described in my Mission to Dahome, passim.

[528] Across Africa, vol. i. pp. 121, 139; vol. ii. 104.

[529] The famous copper mines of the Congo region, whose yield, says Barbot, was mistaken for gold, are noticed in The Cataracts of the Congo, pp. 45, 46.

[530] Captain Cameron has brought home specimens.

[531] From O Muata Cazembe, which also contains a long and valuable description of the copper mines in South-Eastern Africa, worked by the people since olden time.

[532] According to Marco Polo (lib. iii. cap. 34), the men of Zanghibar (Zanzibar) are ‘both tall and stout, but not tall in proportion to their stoutness, for if they were, being so stout and brawny, they would be absolutely like giants; and they are so strong that they will carry for four men and eat for five.’

[533] Anthrop. Coll. p. 135.

[534] The Journ. Anthrop. Inst. (August 1883) has printed an excellent paper ‘On the Mechanical Methods of the Ancient Egyptians.’ Mr. W. M. Flinders Petrie believes that they cut diorite with lathes and jewel graving-points (diamond? or corundum abundant in Midian?); and that the diamond was the ‘piercing-stone’ of early Babylonian Inscriptions.

[535] Gen. xxiii. 18. In 2 Sam. xxiv. 6, ‘Aretz tahtim-hodshi’ should be read, ‘Aretz ha-Hittim Kadesh,’ ‘the land of the Hittites of (city) Kadesh.’

[536] Trans. Soc. Bib. Archæology, vol. v. part 2, p. 354. They were then the paramount nation in Syria, from the Euphrates to the Libanus; and the Assyrians knew the region as Mat-Khatte.

[537] Wild work has been made with this word. Some render it ‘large’ (i.e. whale-like); the scholiast calls the Cetians a people of Mysia; others confound them with the Kittaians (Chittim = Cypriots) of Menander in Josephus (A. J. ix. 14; Cory’s Frag., p. 30; London, Reeves & Turner, 1876); others with the people of Kiti (the circle), the Heb. Galil or Galilee.

[538] ‘Two-river’ (land) is mostly applied to the great Interamnian plain, Mesopotamia. Here it must mean Syria proper; and Aram Naharayn (Highlands of the Two Streams) admirably describes Palestine, which is composed of a double anticlinal river-valley formed by the Iarunata (Jordan) and the Arunata (Orontes). The whole length and breadth of the country is distributed between the two, with the exception of the small Litani watershed.

[539] The ‘Aram wine from Halybon’ was produced at Helbún (Halbáún, the inhabitants call it), a gorge-village near Damascus. Being Moslems, they no longer ferment their grape-juice; but the fruit is still famous. The Helbún people speak the broadest dialect, and are a perpetual laughing-stock to the Damascus citizens. The Aleppites derive their ‘Halab’ (Aleppo) because Abraham there milked (halaba) a cow; but the place is older than the Genesitic flood, the Flood.

[540] This word is corruptly written Jerablus, Jorablus, Jirabis, &c.

[541] In Rawlinson’s Herodotus (i. 463) we find that the Southern Hittites numbered twelve kings.

[542] The decisive action is shown on an Egyptian tomb (Brugsch, i. 291).

[543] Ramses left as memorials of his invasion three hieroglyphic tablets cut upon the rocks on the south side of the embouchure of the Nahr el-Kalb (Dog or Wolf River, the Lycus), a few miles north of the Venerable Bayrut (Berytus, &c.). They mark the ancient road which ascended the rough torrent-gorge to its origin in Cælesyria (El-Buká’a). Even since these pages have been written the coffins and mummies of Ramses II. and his daughter have been found at Dayr el-Bahri in Upper Egypt, and conveyed from Thebes to Bulak by Dr. Emil Brugsch. The same collector has been equally lucky with the remains of Seti I., although Belzoni, who discovered the tomb, sent the sarcophagus to the Sloane Museum.

[544] Sesostris derives from Ses, Setesu, Sestesu, or Sestura, i.e. ‘Sethosis, also called Ramses’ (Seti-son?). The Greek Sesostris combines, I have said, the lives of Seti and his son Ramses. According to Brugsch, he is the ‘Pharaoh of the Oppression,’ and the son of the unnamed Princess (Merris? Thermutis?) who ‘found Moses in the bull-rushes.’

The Princess Thermutis, says Josephus, named Moshe (Moses) from mo (má = water) and uses, those who are saved out of it (ses = to reach land). Possibly it is Mu-su = water-son. Josephus was sorely offended by the ‘calumnies’ of Manetho; this Egyptian priest, who wrote under Ptolemy Philadelphus about the time of the LXX, declared that the Hebrews were a familia of leprous slaves who, when expelled from Egypt, were led by a renegade priest called Osarsiph (Osiris-Sapi, god of underworld); and that the number was swollen by Palestinian strangers driven out by Amenophis. He gives the number of lepers and unclean at 250,000 (= 50,000 × 5), and the Hyksos, another impure race, number also 250,000. The learned classics accepted this view, duly abusing the ‘gens sceleratissima’ (Seneca), and the ‘odium generis humani’ (Tacitus).

[545] The site of Kadesh and the Buhayrat Hums (Tarn of Emessa) or B. Kutaynah, a ‘broad’ or widening of the Orontes, was first visited by Dr. Thomson of Bayrut in 1846. I rode about the ‘lake of the land of the Amorites’ in 1870; but found no ruins, or rather ruins of no importance everywhere. It was not then known to me that in a.d. 1200 the geographer Yakut (Geogr. Dict. edit. Wüstenfeld) had noticed the water in his day as the ‘Bahriyat Kuds’ (Tarn of Kadesh). Since that time the Palestine Exploration Fund (July 1881) identified the seat of Atesh or Kadesh with the Tell Nabi Mendeh, a Santon’s tomb on the highest part of the hill where the ruins lie. The site is on the left bank of the Orontes, four English miles south of the ‘broad.’ The city disappears from history after the thirteenth century b.c., but local legend has preserved its memory.

[546] Prof. Ebers, who is familiar with the many portraits of Ramses-Sesostris, declares that he was a handsome man with fine aquiline features, like Napoleon Buonaparte.