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

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CITIES OF EGYPT

called Hnes, the Greeks Heracleopolis, the town of
Hercules, one the civil, the other the religious name.
No hint of history confirmed the conjecture, which rested
on the likeness of a word of three Hebrew letters to
another of four Coptic ones. And the Greek translators
did not read it in the Hebrew text from which they
translated. So Gesenius was not convincing, and Hanes
remained a blank to the reader and a plaything for the
critics.

Research on the spot is better than study at home,
more especially when study has no materials to work
withal. It is hard to make bricks without straw, but
who can build without bricks ? Solid as they seem, the
old tomes of antiquarian research, now left to idle
curiosity and the industrious bookworm, are mere phan-
toms, airy constructions that could only live in the dead
calm of indifference. The breath of inquiry has blown
them away. We now know that it is worse than useless
to speculate where we can observe, to theorise when we
have only to reach out our hands and grasp the facts.
So in the great centres of antique civilisation people are
beginning to scratch the ground, here uncovering a wall,
there clearing a chamber, in the temples and palaces of