SOCIETY OP BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 325, 11 July 1879, Page 17

SOCIETY OP BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.

On Tuesday the April meeting of this society was held at its rooms, 9, Conduit-street, Hanover-square, the President, Dr. Samuel Birch, Keeper of the Oriental Antiquities in the British Museum, in the chair. In the absence of the author, the secretary, Mr. Harry Rylands, read a paper by Professor Lushington, D.C.L.* &c, on " The Historical Inscriptions of Seti I. in the Temple at Kamak." These inscriptions and sculptures record the victories of Seti Meneptah or as he is most commonly called, Seti 1., who, on coming to the throne assumed the name of Ramenma, otherwise read Menmara, although' according to the sacred syntax, the name of the san-god Ra was wont to be written first. He reigned 51 years, beginning about B.c 1455, in Professor Lushington's opinion. The hieroglyphical annals are to be found, along with many valuable records, in the great temple of Ammon Ra, at Thebes. This magnificent sanctuary is more ancient than any other Theban building, dating from the earliest Pharaohs of the great Twelfth Dynasty, between which and the Nineteenth, to which Seti I. belonged, many centuries intervened. As the sacred metropolis of the Theban kings, they had already vied with each other in ornamenting it with fresh architectural glories, sculptures statues, and obelisks. Seti I. conceived the idea of nearly doubling its size, and began to build the Great Hall, with its hundred columns, and to enrich it inside and outside with innumerable sculptures. H« did not live to complete this chef d'auvro of Egyptian art, but it was finished by his son, Ramses 11., styled the Great, the Sesostris of the classical historians. Owing to the destruction of the upper portion of the stone wall many of the historical bas-reliefs are lost; but there still remains a copious chronicle of Seti's victories, beginning on the northern side, aud relating to the Pharaoh's conquests in the earliest years of his reign. They give representations of lakes, fortified towns in a state of siege, and all the various incidents and scenes of the battle-field. A woody and well-watered country is indicated by trees and lakes, and the relative importance of each town by the size of its citadel. Rivers are characteristically delineated, the Nile in particular being' indicated by its crocodiles and peculiar fishe3, while a bridge serves as a communication with the opposite bank, showing, as Sir Gardner Wilkinson observes, that the Nile was already bridged at that early period. Sometimes the Pharaoh's horses have their names engraved above or below them, as, likewise, the names of towns, fortresses, or streams and other bodies of water by which the royal army passes on its march. The hieroglyphical texts had been figured by Champollion, Rosellini, Lepsius, Brugsch, and Duemichen, aud had been often alluded to, with partial renderings, in various historieß of Egypt ; but a consecutive translation of the whole remains was now attempted for the first time. The victories of the Egyptian hero which are depicted in the sculptures arc for the most part those over the Rotennu or Syrians in the widest sense ; the Kharu, or Syrians of the coast ; the Khitau, whom Mr. Gladstone has identified with the Homeric Keteioi of Asia Minor ; the Tehennu, or Libyans ; the storming of the city of Kadesh on the Orontes, kc. A second paper was a translation of M. Eugene Revillout, of Paris, of a document recording a lawsuit tried before the Laokritai, during the reign of Ptolemy Soter (B.C. 305-285). — Times.