Poole, Reginald S.: The cities of Egypt (London, 1882)

30

CITIES OF EGYPT.

CHAPTER III.

BANES.

There are cities and men whom we meet but once in
written history. Some of them appear abruptly without
geographical place or note of descent, mere names to
us and nothing more. They shine for a moment out of
the darkness of the past and are lost. If we are careful
readers, desirous to understand, we open some dictionary
and follow our will-o'-the-wisps into a morass peopled
by the strange creations of the commentators. What
were names easily forgotten become riddles impossible
to remember. Suddenly some ancient monument, a
tablet, a statue, or a coin, newly dug out of the earth,
recalls the lost word and clothes it with all the circum-
stance of historical reality; it becomes at once a living
thing, and we marvel how it could ever have been a dead
symbol.

Such has been the fate of the city of Hanes, once