DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4393#0445
AB YD VS AND CAIRO. 427
capital of Egypt. The seat of power shifted strangely
with different dynasties, being established now in the
delta, now at Thebes, now at Elephantine ; but having
once departed from the site which, by reason of its central
position and the unbounded fertility of its neighborhood,was
above all others best fitted to play this great part in the his-
tory of the country, it never again returned to the point from
which it had started. That point, however, was unques-
tionably the center from which the great Egyptian people
departed upon its wonderful career. Here was the nursery
of its strength. Hence it derived its proud title to an un-
mixed autochthonous descent. For no greater proof of
the native origin of the race can be adduced than the posi-
tion which their first city occupies upon the map of Egypt.
"hat any tribe of colonists should have made straight for
the heart of the country and there have established them-
selves in the midst of barbarous and probably hostile abor-
igines is evidently out of the question. It is, on the
other hand, equally clear that if Egypt had beeu colonized
from Asia or Ethiopia, the strangers would, on the one
hand, have founded their earliest settlement in the neigh-
borhood of the isthmus; or, on the other, have halted first
among the then well-watered plains of Nubia.* But the
Egyptians started from the fertile heart of their own
mother country and began by being great at home.
Abydus and Teni, planted on the same platform of desert,
were probably united at one time by a straggling suburb
inhabited by theembalmers and other tradesfolk concerned
m the business of death and burial. A chain of mounds,
excavated only where the temples were situated, now stand
to us for the famous city of Abydus. An ancient crude-
brick inclosure and an artificial tumulus mark the site of
■Teni. The temples and the tumulus, divided by the now
exhausted necropolis, and about as distant from one an-
other as Medinet Habu and the Kamesseum.
There must have been many older temples at Abydus
than these which we now see, one of which was built by
Seti I, and the other by Eameses II. Or possibly, as in
See owning address of Professor K. Owen, C. B., etc., "Beport
of Proceedings of the Second International Congress of Orientalists,
Ethnological Section;" London, 1874. Also a paper on "The
Ethnology of Egypt," bv the same, published in the " Journal of the
Anthropological institute," vol. iv, No. 1, p. 240: Lond., 1874.
capital of Egypt. The seat of power shifted strangely
with different dynasties, being established now in the
delta, now at Thebes, now at Elephantine ; but having
once departed from the site which, by reason of its central
position and the unbounded fertility of its neighborhood,was
above all others best fitted to play this great part in the his-
tory of the country, it never again returned to the point from
which it had started. That point, however, was unques-
tionably the center from which the great Egyptian people
departed upon its wonderful career. Here was the nursery
of its strength. Hence it derived its proud title to an un-
mixed autochthonous descent. For no greater proof of
the native origin of the race can be adduced than the posi-
tion which their first city occupies upon the map of Egypt.
"hat any tribe of colonists should have made straight for
the heart of the country and there have established them-
selves in the midst of barbarous and probably hostile abor-
igines is evidently out of the question. It is, on the
other hand, equally clear that if Egypt had beeu colonized
from Asia or Ethiopia, the strangers would, on the one
hand, have founded their earliest settlement in the neigh-
borhood of the isthmus; or, on the other, have halted first
among the then well-watered plains of Nubia.* But the
Egyptians started from the fertile heart of their own
mother country and began by being great at home.
Abydus and Teni, planted on the same platform of desert,
were probably united at one time by a straggling suburb
inhabited by theembalmers and other tradesfolk concerned
m the business of death and burial. A chain of mounds,
excavated only where the temples were situated, now stand
to us for the famous city of Abydus. An ancient crude-
brick inclosure and an artificial tumulus mark the site of
■Teni. The temples and the tumulus, divided by the now
exhausted necropolis, and about as distant from one an-
other as Medinet Habu and the Kamesseum.
There must have been many older temples at Abydus
than these which we now see, one of which was built by
Seti I, and the other by Eameses II. Or possibly, as in
See owning address of Professor K. Owen, C. B., etc., "Beport
of Proceedings of the Second International Congress of Orientalists,
Ethnological Section;" London, 1874. Also a paper on "The
Ethnology of Egypt," bv the same, published in the " Journal of the
Anthropological institute," vol. iv, No. 1, p. 240: Lond., 1874.