Petrie. The "Great Temenos" of Prof. Petrie
has now been shown to be non-existent. Mr. Hogarth has also pointed out
that an old Egyptian town existed at Nau-kratis long before the Greeks
came there. This town is mentioned on a very interesting stele of black
basalt (discovered at Tell Gaif, the site of Naukratis, and now in the
Cairo Museum), under the name of "Permerti, which is called Nukrate."
The first is the old Egyptian name, the second the Greek name adapted
to Egyptian hieroglyphs. The stele was erected by Tekhtnebf, the last
native king of Egypt, to commemorate his gifts to the temples of Neith
on the occasion of his accession at Sais. It is beautifully cut, and the
inscription is written in a curious manner, with alphabetic spellings
instead of ideographs, and ideographs instead of alphabetic spellings,
which savours fully of the affectation of the learned pedant who drafted
it; for now, of course, in the fourth century before Christ, nobody but
a priestly antiquarian could read hieroglyphics. Demotic was the only
writing for practical purposes.
We see this fact well illustrated in the inscriptions of the Ptolemaic
temples. The accession of the Ptolemies marked a great increase in the
material wealth of Egypt, and foreign conquest again came in fashion.
Ptolemy Euergetes marched into Asia in the grand style of a Ramses and
brought back the images of gods which had been carried off by Esarhaddon
or Nebuchadnezzar II centuries before.
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