DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.11610#0042
3°
TEN YEARS' DIGGING IN EGYPT
course of which I discovered Naukratis ; and as soon
as the marshes had somewhat dried I went in
February to Tanis. It is an out-of-the-way place,
inaccessible except by water during some months,
twenty miles from a post or station; on three sides
the marshy plains stretch away to the horizon, only
a little cultivation existing on the south. When I
arrived the mounds were almost impassable for the
mud, and continual storms threatened my tent. But
gradually I built a house on the top of the mounds,
and from thence looked down over the work on one
side, and over the village on the other.
Tanis is a great ring of mounds, around the wide
plain in which lie the temple ruins. And the first
day I went over it I saw that the temple site was
worked out; the limits of the ruins had been reached,
and no more statues or buildings should be hoped for,
by the side of what was already known. But such
were the large expectations about the site, that I had
to prove the case, by a great amount of fruitless
trenching in all directions. The only monuments that
we unearthed were far out of the temple, in a Ptole-
maic shrine ; this contained a fine stele of Ptolemy II
and Arsinoe, which was entirely gilt when discovered,
and two or three other steles, the recess containing
the large stele being flanked by two sphinxes. The
main stele and sphinxes are now in the British
Museum.
But though digging was not productive in the
temple, yet I found two important monuments which
had been exposed by Mariettc's excavators, and yet
were never noticed by himself, Ue Rouge, or others
TEN YEARS' DIGGING IN EGYPT
course of which I discovered Naukratis ; and as soon
as the marshes had somewhat dried I went in
February to Tanis. It is an out-of-the-way place,
inaccessible except by water during some months,
twenty miles from a post or station; on three sides
the marshy plains stretch away to the horizon, only
a little cultivation existing on the south. When I
arrived the mounds were almost impassable for the
mud, and continual storms threatened my tent. But
gradually I built a house on the top of the mounds,
and from thence looked down over the work on one
side, and over the village on the other.
Tanis is a great ring of mounds, around the wide
plain in which lie the temple ruins. And the first
day I went over it I saw that the temple site was
worked out; the limits of the ruins had been reached,
and no more statues or buildings should be hoped for,
by the side of what was already known. But such
were the large expectations about the site, that I had
to prove the case, by a great amount of fruitless
trenching in all directions. The only monuments that
we unearthed were far out of the temple, in a Ptole-
maic shrine ; this contained a fine stele of Ptolemy II
and Arsinoe, which was entirely gilt when discovered,
and two or three other steles, the recess containing
the large stele being flanked by two sphinxes. The
main stele and sphinxes are now in the British
Museum.
But though digging was not productive in the
temple, yet I found two important monuments which
had been exposed by Mariettc's excavators, and yet
were never noticed by himself, Ue Rouge, or others