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Temple ruins.

Fig. 6. El Hibeh.

Temple ruins.

Fig. 7. Tanis, with obelisks.

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The observing of resemblances and differences, and the memory of physical appearances required for this, are absolute requisites for carrying on the duties of excavating. Here we deal with the appearances in a land of sun-dried brickwork, where the accumulations are great, as in Egypt, Syria, and Mesopotamia. In a rocky land, such as Greece, there is not the same sheltering mud, and the appearances are therefore very different.

Temples.

The nature of a site can be guessed pretty closely from its aspect. A wide open space with mounds around it is almost certainly a temple site; and if there are stone chips strewn over it, no doubt remains as to its nature (Figs. 6, 7). The temples being of stone from the XIIth Dynasty onwards, they were ruined by the removal of the material in each age of disruption; but the houses of the towns, being always of mud brick, continually crumbled and decayed, and so filled up the ground with rubbish. In Egypt mud-brick towns accumulate at about 20 inches in a century; or in the rainy Syrian climate at about 50 inches. Herodotus describes walking on the roofs of the houses and seeing down into the temple precincts; and in every great site in Egypt, such as Tanis, Buto, Bubastis, Memphis, or Koptos, the plain of temple ruins had the house mounds far above it on all sides. The temples were ruined both for building-stone and for lime-burning. It is rare to get any portions of a limestone building left; sandstone is often found, and all the great temples which remain are of sandstone; granite generally has lasted, except where it has been split up in Roman times for millstones. The search for limestone has led to whole buildings being upset in order to extract the limestone foundations. The basalt pavement of Khufu, the granite pylon of Crocodilopolis, and probably the granite temple of Iseum, have been overthrown thus. Especially in the Delta, where no limestone hills are accessible, this destructive search for lime has been unrelenting in all ages; and it is seldom that ancient limestone is now met with. Hence all that can generally be seen of a temple site is a plain of dust with a few tumbled blocks of granite, the exposed tops of which are entirely weathered as rounded masses. Five or ten feet down there may be a rich harvest of carvings and inscriptions.