DID EGYPT COLONISE BRITAIN?

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6815, 21 January 1929, Page 9

DID EGYPT COLONISE BRITAIN?

Old Names Prompt Question

LONDON, Dec. 8. The interesting theory that the Egyptians had settled colonies in Great Britain about 1400 8.C., and that there are even a number of places in England still bearing names in the original Egyptian tongue, was the subject ot 'the tenth lecture given a short while since by Dr. J. Rendel Harris at Birmingham. Dr Rendel Harris is known on botli sides of the Atlantic, not only as a groat Biblical scholar who has been a professor at John Hopkins University and at Havcrford College, Pcnsylvania, as well as librarian of the Hylands Library, Manchester, but also particularly for his well grounded views put forward a few years ago that the great Barn at Jordans, Buckinghamshire, the famous Quaker centre, is built of the umbers of the Mayilcwcr.

“A Common Highway.” Speaking at tko Woodbrookc Educational Settlement of the Society of Friends, to the studonts of the associated colleges at Solly Oak, Dr Harris stated that he had suspected for some time that tho prefix “Wa” ot “Wat” in a British place name -was a survival of tho Egyptian word for ‘way.” Following up this clue he now found that the name of Watendlcth, a hamlet in Cumberland, not far from Derwcntwater, was pure Egyptian for “the road of all men” that is “a common' highway'.” Dr Harris then set himself to inquire whether there was any reason why Egyptians had placed colonics so far away from Egypt, and also if there were any Egyption remains in the area. The search for gold, he said, was likely to bo a lure to their colonists, and on the bank of Derwcntwater there is still a disused mine ,erroneously thought to be an ancient lead mine, called Grddscoops. On the other side of Derwcntwater there is an ancient stone circle hardly less interesting that that at Stonehenge, and clearly the temple of worshippers of the Sun God, whose Egyptian name was Ra. There was a smaller circle in the same neighbourhood at Stctmurthy, near lake Bassenthwaitke. • This' was a name which in his opinion was obviously connected with the Egyptian deities Set and Merti, which aro invoked in the Egyptian “Book of the Dead.”

Names With. Egyptian Tinge. But this amazing theory of the perpetuation of the memory and of the language of ancient Egypt in the Lake District of England, did not complete the highly interesting case that this great - and ingenious scholar has built up. He began looking for places the names of which seemed to have some Egyptian linje Presum.ig tha f the colonists would have reached Eng.an.l by coasting round Europe and crossiug the Straits of Dover into Kent, Dr. Harris suggested, that the village of Sarrc, in Kent, was obviously the Egyptian Sa-Pi/a (Son of Ea, or the Sun), and that the same memories by these people of Ea is to be found in the villages of Bayleigh and Bawreth in Essex. Following their likely movements and settlements up the Thames Valley, he drew attention to the number of places with names suggesting that the}) had been the habitations of a-tribe or family named the Sonnings, such as Sunningdale, Sonning, and Sunningwell He suggested that the descendants of tho Egyptians . had- maintained their sun worship right into the Christian era, and that when the Saxons came into the land they called them the Sonnings. To confirm this supped lion Dr Harris points out that near Sunningwell, a spot not far from Oxford (a city which also might have had an Egyptian origin) there is a spot called Rollright, which he thought was a corruption of Eawrcth. And at Eollright thero is to be found a small circle oE stones, obviously erected for similar p.nposcs to those at Stonehenge and Keswick.

Dr Bendcl Harris even goes so far as to suggest that tho family name of Lord Rayloigh of Rayleigh, Essex, which is Strutt, “a very uncanny and undignified name,' 1 probably ought to have an “A” in I'iont of ft, and that then the first syllable “Ast” is one of the forms of tho Egyptian deity Isis. In “The Book of ‘the Dead" is named a personage called “Rut-en-Ast,” which probably meant “Steward of Isis," and if this is correct, lie points out that “it takes the Strutt family back to an earlier origin than the muchvaunted Norman Conquest, and leaves them on the spot where they originally settled ” as Egyptian Colonists! I