Jan.9] PROCEEDINGS. [1894.
THE GOD SET OF RAMESSU II AND AN
EGYPTO-SYRIAN DEITY.By F. L. Griffith.On Plate XI of Nebesheh and Defenneh, publishedby the Egypt
Exploration Fund, are given copies of the inscriptions engraved
upon a closely- draped crouching statue in black granite, which
was found in the larger temple at Tell Nebesheh. Thestatue
represents a royal charioteer named Merenptah, and upon the
lap between the hands is the cartouche of Ramessu II, apparently
as a deceased king. The date of the monument is therefore in
the XlXth dynasty. On the front of the garment had been
sculptured figures of two deities facing each other, with short
inscriptionsabove; of these two deities, the upper part of one
is erased, together with the inscription, the other is the local
goddessUazyt(Buto)of Amt. Thecopiesusedin the publication
were made from squeezes taken whilethe statue stilllay in the
trench, and the erasedfigure was indistinct in them ; the only
noticeablepeculiarity wasan appearance of ties on the edge of
his garment.
Before the last sheets of the memoir on Nebesheh were
returnedto the printer, the statue arrivedat the British Museum,
andwas placed in the portico : the original, whenexamined,showed
a trace of sculpture, whichseemed to me to be part of a figure of
a child, behind the feet of the erased deity. Thissuggestion I
notedin the Errata on p. 112, but a second inspectionin a better
light,before the statue wasdespatched to its final destination at
Boston,showedthatthe line wasthe end of a rope that couldbe
indistinctlytracedto the top of the head-dress of the deity.
A very similarfigure withthe enormous pigtail(?) or rope (?)
pendent from a tall head-dress occurs on the famous stela of
400 yearsfoundby Mariette in the Temple of San, andknown by
his copy published in the Revue Archeologiquefor 1865, PlateIV,
87 H