Cook, Arthur B.: Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 1): Zeus god of the bright sky (Cambridge, 1914)

378 The Ram and the Sun in Egypt

the fourth, philosophers, astronomers, physicians, and masters of learning ; on
the fifth, builders; on the sixth, foremen of guilds ; and lastly on the seventh,
the bulk of the commoners. Each class was bidden "to look upon those only
that were below it, not those that were above it, for they would never be on an
equality with their betters." This rule was an education in itself. The wife
of Minakiush slew him with a knife : so he died after a reign of sixty years1.'

Makrisi further tells at third hand how the officer of a certain
Emir saw in the country of the Oases an orange-tree, which every
year bore 14,000 ripe fruit2. The Oasis of Santariah or Siwah was
in his own day inhabited by 600 Berbers, who spoke a dialect akin
to Zialah or Zenatah and suffered much from fevers and evil spirits3.
Leo Africanus {c. 1517 A.D.) speaks of the Oases as a district
situated to the west of Egypt in the Libyan desert. The district
comprised three fortresses, numerous houses, fruitful fields and
dates in great abundance. Its inhabitants were almost wholly
black, very rich, and remarkably avaricious4.

The first Europaean to reach the Oasis of Siwah in modern
times and to recognise in it the long-lost Ammoneion was the
English traveller W. G. Browne, who left Alexandria with a
caravan of Arab traders on February 24, 1792, and, following much
the same route as Alexander the Great, entered Siwah on March 9.
Here he stayed four days, making geographical, ethnographical,
and archaeological notes5. A few years later came the German
F. C. Hornemann, who, obtaining a permit from General Bonaparte
then in Egypt, joined a large company of pilgrims returning from
Mecca via Cairo to the west of Africa and spent eight days in
Siwah, September 22—29, 1798. His observations confirmed those
of Browne6. The French were next in the field. The incautious
and ill-starred engineer Boutin or Butin towards the middle of
18197, and the more careful and successful traveller Cailliaud at

1 G. Steindorff Durch die Libysche Wiiste zur Amonsoase Bielefeld und Leipzig 1904
p. 79 f. 2 Langles op. cit. ii. 390, Parthey op. cit. p. 173.

3 Langles op. cit. ii. 384, Parthey op. cit. p. 173.

4 Langles op. cit. ii. 354, Parthey op. cit. p. 173. Wansleben, who visited Egypt in
1664, 1672, and 1673 A.D., praised the dates of Siba as the best (S. Ideler in the Fund-
gruben des Orients Wien 1814 iv. 401, Parthey op. cit. p. 173).

5 W. G. Browne Travels in Africa, Egypt and Syria, from the year 1J92
to 1798 London 1799. There is also a German translation (Leipzig und Gera 1800).

6 Fr. Hornemanns Tagebuch seiner Reise von Cairo nach Murzuck, der Hauptstadt des
Kdnigreichs Fessan in Afrika in den Jahren 1797 und 1798, aus der deutschen Handschrift
desselben herausgegeben von Carl Konig, Weimar 1802. Hornemann himself, having
been commissioned to explore north Africa by the London Association for promoting
the Discovery of the Interior Parts of Africa, continued his route westwards from Siwah
and never returned home. But his letters were forwarded to England by Bonaparte. The
minute-book of the African Association containing an account of them formed part of the
Leake collection and is now preserved at Cambridge.

7 Parthey op. cit. p. 177. Boutin took with him a portable boat, in which to navigate