Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 8.djvu/519

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REMARKABLE OBJECT OF THE REIGN OF AMENOPHIS III.
399


Museum of the Vatican,^ is dated on the first day of Atliyr, in the eleventh year of his reign, when lie ordered a great Itasin, or lake, 3G00 cubits long, and GOO cubits broad, and of the capacity of 1000 loads of excavated earth [?], to be made. It was ready on the 16th day of the same month. The Kiii"- celebrated the festival of the " Waters," ?>., of the inun- dation " in it on that da}^ in it coming into it, in the barge of the Solar disk most gracious" {atcn iicfni). This is the first appearance of his heretical worship of the sun, one year after his marriage with the Queen. There is also a tablet in the British Museum,[1] which is a public act, dated on the sixth of Athyr, of the eleventh year of his reign, but its contents are of no great historical importance. There are other monu- ments, tablets and monolithic shrines, lying in the quarry at the Gebel Silseleh,[2] dated in the twenty-seventh year of his reign, and which record the monarch's devotion to Amen Ra, or the Theban Jupiter, and to Sebak, or Suchis, the god of the locality, showing that at this time no change had taken place in the established religion of the country. There are several other monuments referring to his reign, but it is not possible to assign them, in the present state of our knowledge, to their relative positions. One of the most important of these is a sandstone tablet belonoino; to the Duke of Northumberland, and was removed from the Samneh ; containing the statement of the King's campaigns in Æthiopia. The text, unfortunately mutilated at the commencement, records the great Razzia of the King — dating it states, "from the first hour of the first day, he made fifty-two towings" — the mode by which the water carriage is still calculated in Nubia — "from the port of Baki to the land ofAtarid," possibly Aduhs. From Abha^ the King brought 150 head of living captives, 110 boys {maga),^


  • r6 Rosellini, M. R.,xliv., 2. I possess a

plaster cast of this scarabæus, made by Rosellini, which I owe to the kindness of Professor Migharini. Cf. Dr. Hincks, on the Age of the Eighteenth dynasty of Manetho. Trans. Roy. Ir. Acad., vol. xxxi., pt. i., p. 7.

  • r9 Where Abha was, is uncertain. Abwi.

the modern name of the Astapus, is very like it. There was also a town called Ep-is, opposite Mcrce. Pliny, N. II., hb. vi., c. xxix., s. 35. Adiilis, founded by slaves, was the great emporium of the Troglodytes. Ibid.

  • r1 This word is followed by the determinative of a boy. Bunsen, Egypts. Place,

p. 36, No. 5-10, in this inscription ; but in that of Aahmes.Pensuben at Eilthyiæ, by a man destroying himself or enemy. Bunsen, 559, 30. It recalls to mind the names Alagas, Polytcn. ii.. e. 2K ; and 

Mago, Liv. xxii., 46 ; xxiii, 12 ; xxx., 18, 
of African oriu'in. Ciccr. i., 58; Varro, i.,

» 1 ; Pliny, xviii., 3, A:c. In the Haou8i<a dialect. »uV/r/c«- signifies a man. and mata 

a woman. Ilnrlu-son, W. B. Not*s on

    hesa, "fierce," 102; I have some doubt about this ending, as the two vowels ui, which are also 102, may be the end of hesa-ui, "fierce;" the number is then wanting.

  1. ↑ This tablet, No. 138*, has never been published.
  2. ↑ Rosellini, Mon. Stor., iii., p. 215.
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