DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14058#0118
110 EGYPTIAN FUNEREAL INSCRIPTIONS
than arrive at an approximation as to the period
when Hui and his son Mes lived. It may be ob-
served that the popular use of names belonging to
persons of princely rank often affords a, satisfactory
clue as to dates. Thus the fact, that individuals in
the lower grades of life had been designated Victoria,
Albert, or Alexandra, would in times to come, and
in the absence of other data, afford a strong negative
presumption, that the epoch during which they
lived did not at all events precede that of the august
persons whose names they had adopted. It may
therefore be assumed, as a matter almost of certainty,
that Mes did not live before the end of the XVIIIth,
or beginning of the XlXth Dynasty, during which
period the designations he and his father assumed
had become fashionable, from their association with
the vocabulary of royal names. The probability is,
that the period in which they lived was during or
soon after that of the Kamessides.
The hieroglyphic determinative of the name of
Memphis, as the City of the White Walls, is a
curious illustration of the remote antiquity of the
synonym, and of its perpetuation up to the period
when intercourse was established with Greece. It
affords an incidental proof of the fidelity with which
Herodotus framed his narrative, that he should have
spoken of the Xevkov ret^o?, and in so doing, literally
translated one of the vernacular names by which
the citadel of Memphis was known to those Egyptians
with whom he conversed.
Mes, as wTell as his father and his immediate pre-
decessor in some, if not all the offices he held, must
than arrive at an approximation as to the period
when Hui and his son Mes lived. It may be ob-
served that the popular use of names belonging to
persons of princely rank often affords a, satisfactory
clue as to dates. Thus the fact, that individuals in
the lower grades of life had been designated Victoria,
Albert, or Alexandra, would in times to come, and
in the absence of other data, afford a strong negative
presumption, that the epoch during which they
lived did not at all events precede that of the august
persons whose names they had adopted. It may
therefore be assumed, as a matter almost of certainty,
that Mes did not live before the end of the XVIIIth,
or beginning of the XlXth Dynasty, during which
period the designations he and his father assumed
had become fashionable, from their association with
the vocabulary of royal names. The probability is,
that the period in which they lived was during or
soon after that of the Kamessides.
The hieroglyphic determinative of the name of
Memphis, as the City of the White Walls, is a
curious illustration of the remote antiquity of the
synonym, and of its perpetuation up to the period
when intercourse was established with Greece. It
affords an incidental proof of the fidelity with which
Herodotus framed his narrative, that he should have
spoken of the Xevkov ret^o?, and in so doing, literally
translated one of the vernacular names by which
the citadel of Memphis was known to those Egyptians
with whom he conversed.
Mes, as wTell as his father and his immediate pre-
decessor in some, if not all the offices he held, must