pper Egypt, are found surmounting the sign nut (3), sufficiently shows
that this symbol also stood for an extended capital, a state, and that
both "lands" constituted at one time separate units or reproductions of
the identical plan. Returning to the ancient capitals known as the "Annu
of the North" and the "Annu of the South:" according to Dr. Wallis Budge
the first occupied the site of Heliopolis and was identical with the city
of On mentioned in Genesis (XLI: 45). The Annu Qemat was Hermonthis, the
modern Menth, Armant or Erment, situated on the west bank of the Nile a
little to the south of the ruins of Thebes. It is noteworthy that the name
for Thebes, given in the cuneiform inscriptions and Hebrew scriptures, No
(Ezek. XXX:4) and No-am-on (Nahum III:8), is in one case the simple
inversion of On, the Hebrew name of Heliopolis, the Northern Annu, while
in the second instance the name of Thebes incorporates both forms.

The allusion to the "square of the city of Edfu," and to buildings laid
out on a square ground-plan, contained in inscriptions cited by
Brugsch,(107) also furnishes an indication, which can doubtless be
multiplied, that, as in Babylonia, Egyptian cities were sometimes built in
the form of a square. In Egyptian hieroglyphics, the square (slightly
elongated) is employed to express the consonant _p_. The sign appears to
have been cryptic and to have constituted the symbol of the god Ptah, "The
Opener," considered as the most ancient of Egyptian gods. According to Dr.
Wallis Budge, "the sign is the picture of a door made up of a number of
boards fastened together by three cross-pieces at the back, and there can
be no doubt that the word for door was connected with the verb pth=to
open, and that it was pronounced something like ptah (compare the Hebrew
pethah). The sound of the first letter of ptah being _p_, the phonetic
value of the door became _p_" (First steps in Egyptian, p. 5). To the
above I add the observation that the plain square or outline of the door,
without indications of boards and cross-pieces, is usually employed in the
published texts. The association of the square, representing a door with
three cross-beams, and expressing the sound ptah is particularly
interesting when connected with the word for earth or land=ta, and the
method of expressing the word universe=taui, by the threefold repetition
of the sign ta, which resembles a cross-beam (fig. 60, 5). An interesting
association of the squ