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A wall once surrounded the town, and beyond the wall was a necropolis. The place is now called Tell Gurah, and the relics give inscriptions of Thûtmosis III. or Tûtankhamon and of Horemheb. In the same season of 1888 89, Miss Amelia B. Edwards, who had been sent out by the Egypt Exploration Fund, brought to a conclusion the excavations which had been carried on for several seasons at Bubastis.
Now Bubastis in the Hellenic tongue is Artemis, and her temple is ordered thus: Except the entrance it is completely surrounded by water; for channels come in from the Nile, not joining one another, but each extending as far as the entrance of the temple, one flowing round on the one side and the other on the other side, each a hundred feet broad and shaded over with trees; and the gateway has a height of ten fathoms, and it is adorned with figures six cubits high, very noteworthy.
The hall itself was built of red granite. Another hall, which Naville called the "Hypostyle Hall," possessed a colonnade of such beauty that it would seem to justify the statement of Herodotus, that the temple of Bubastis was one of the finest in Egypt. The columns were either splendid red granite monoliths, with lotus-bud or palm-leaf capitals; or, a head of Hâthor from which fell two long locks.
"We took her with us on the great pilgrimage to Bubastis, during which the Egyptians forget their usual gravity, and the shores of the Nile look like a great stage where the wild games of the satyrs are being performed by choruses, hurried on in the unrestrained wantonness of intoxication.
They landed at Parastonium in Libya, where he remained in the desert with Aristocrates the rhetorician and one or two other friends, and sent Cleopatra forward to Alexandria. There she talked of carrying her ships across the isthmus to the head of the Red Sea, along the canal from Bubastis to the Bitter Lakes, and thence flying to some unknown land from the power of the conqueror.
The expanse of brackish water, now known as the Bitter Lakes, was then, in all probability, directly connected with the Red Sea. The length of this canal, according to Pliny, was sixty-two miles, or about fifty-seven English miles. This length, allowing for the sinuosity of the valley traversed, agrees with the distance between the site of old Bubastis and the present head of the Bitter Lakes.
"Since the sun rises beyond the palace of the pharaoh and sets over the pyramids, various wonders have happened in this country. In the days of the Pharaoh Sememphes marvelous things appeared near the pyramid of Kochom, and a plague fell on Egypt. In the time of Boetus the ground opened near Bubastis and swallowed many people.
The cats of Bubastis and the lions of Tell es Seba crowd our museums. The lions of Horbeit may be reckoned among the chefs-d'oeuvre of Egyptian statuary. It formed part of the ornamentation of a temple or naos door; and the other side was either built into a wall or imbedded in a piece of wood.
He discoursed of Cimabue, Arpino, Carpaccio, and Argostino of the gloom of Caravaggio, of the amenity of Albano, of the colors of Titian, of the frows of Rubens, and of the waggeries of Jan Steen. There was the President of the Fum-Fudge University. He was of opinion that the moon was called Bendis in Thrace, Bubastis in Egypt, Dian in Rome, and Artemis in Greece.
Now, for a time in the spring of the previous year, I had devoted much labor to an inquiry in this place, which stands of course roughly upon the site of the ancient Egyptian city of Bubastis.
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