Naville, Edouard: Bubastis: (1887 - 1889) (London, 1891)

DYNASTIES TWENTY-THREE TO TWENTY-NINE.

5:,

devouring the head of a human being, and who
often wears the emblems of Nefertum.1 The
triad 2 of Bubastis consists of Turn, Bast, and
Makes, called also Nefertum or Horhikeii. As
we know that the ichneumon was an emblem of
Turn,3 there is nothing extraordinary in the
fact that those animals should be mixed in the
cemetery with the cats which represented Bast
and Mahes.

DYNASTIES TWENTY-THREE TO
TWENTY-NINE.

After the Osorkons it seems that Bubastis
soon began to decline, we find no more impor-
tant monuments, and hardly any traces of the
kings who preceded Nekhthorheb. We must
remember that the country went through
troubled times which were not favourable to
the execution of great works, for which peace
and prosperity are necessary. Egypt had to
undergo several invasions, of the Ethiopians
first, and afterwards of the Assyrians, to whom
she was long tributary. The dynasty which re-
stored to Egypt part of her former splendour,
under whose reign there was a kind of revival
both in art and in political life, the twenty-
sixth, does not seem to have taken much interest
in Bubastis, but to have concentrated its works
on other localities, like Sais, its native city, or
the north-eastern part of the Delta.

However, two email monuments of that
dynasty have been preserved; one of them
bearing its date, and which is the forepart
of a crouching statuette in basalt, of very
fine workmanship, with Bast sculptured in
the middle, and an inscription on each side
(pi. xliii. d). On the arms are the car-

1 Goshen, pi. iii. 3, vi. G, vii. 5.

2 See Goshen, pi. ii. G, the three members of the triad
under their various forms standing before Sopt.

3 Goshen, pi. vi. G.

touches of the king Uahahra, Apries, Hophra,
under whose reign the man lived. He was un-
doubtedly a high dignitary, for his titles are :
prince of the first order, chancellor, and chief of
the friends of the Icing. His name was Nes-
pahor, and his surname Neferabraanlch, the living
Neferabra, the image of Neferabra, who was king
Psammetik II., under whose reign he was born.
His father was a prophet, and was called
Menhor, the image of Horns.

Another monument, the style of which is
Saitic, is a much obliterated group, in limestone,
of a priest and priestess, now in the British
Museum. The inscription engraved on the back
contains the remainder of the titles of the two
persons, with the usual formulas. It is divided
in two, the right side referring to the priestess,
and the left to the priest, whose name has dis-
appeared. There was also some text inscribed
on the edge of the monument (pi. xliii. a, a'.)

We see there that the title of herseshta was

special to Bubastis; we saw it given to the
goddess herself, we saw also that Khaemuas, the
son of Rameses II., had been invested with the

same dignity as the Saitic priest, who is ^

herseshta selchetnuter, priest of the holy

field, the usual name of the territory of
Bubastis. It is the first time that we find the

name of the goddess written ^ ft ® j] fl fl ^ ^

Selchetnuter, which I consider to be the
Egyptian name corresponding to the Greek
BovfidaTis aypia.4

In the same inscription also we come across

an unknown geographical name jYjYT^ 1 the

garden or the field or the marsh of Horns, as we
saw before that there was one of Bast. It must
have been a locality in the neighbourhood of the
temple, or at least in the territory of the city, for
the man says that he received for his hereditary
share the house of his father in the garden of

4 The Mound of the Jew, p. 23.