he inscriptions of the Ptolemaic
temples. The accession of the Ptolemies marked a great increase in the
material wealth of Egypt, and foreign conquest again came in fashion.
Ptolemy Euergetes marched into Asia in the grand style of a Ramses and
brought back the images of gods which had been carried off by Esarhaddon
or Nebuchadnezzar II centuries before. He was received on his return
to Egypt with acclamations as a true successor of the Pharaohs. The
imperial spirit was again in vogue, and the archaistic simplicity and
independence of the Saites gave place to an archaistic imperialism, the
first-fruits of which were the repair and building of temples in the
great Pharaonic style. On these we see the Ptolemies masquerading as
Pharaohs, and the climax of absurdity is reached when Ptolemy Auletes
(the Piper) is seen striking down Asiatic enemies in the manner of
Amen-hetep or Ramses! This scene is directly copied from a Ramesside
temple, and we find imitations of reliefs of Ramses II so slavish that
the name of the earlier king is actually copied, as well as the relief,
and appears above the figure of a Ptolemy. The names of the nations who
were conquered by Thothmes III are repeated on Ptolemaic sculptures to
do duty for the conquered of Euergetes, with all sorts of mistakes
in spelling, naturally, and also with later interpolations. Such an
inscription is that in the temple of Kom Ombo, which Prof. Say ce has
held to contain the names of "Caphtor and Casluhim" and to prove the
knowledge of the latter name in the fourteenth century before Christ.
The name of Caphtor is the old Egyptian Keftiu (Crete); that of Casluhim
is unknown in real Old Egyptian inscriptions, and in this Ptolemaic list
at Kom Ombo it may be quite a late interpolation in the lists, perhaps
no older than the Persian period, since we find the names of Parsa
(Persia) and Susa, which were certainly unknown to Thothmes III,
included in it. We see generally from the Ptolemaic inscriptions that
nobody could read them but a few priests, who often made mistakes. One
of the most serious was the identification of Keftiu with Phoenicia in
the Stele of Canopus. This misled modern archaeologists down to the
time of Dr. Evans's discoveries at Knossos, though how these utterly
un-Semitic looking Keftiu could have been Phoenicians was a puzzle to
everybody. We now know, of course, that they were Mycenaean or
Minoan Cretans, and that the Ptolemaic antiquaries made a mista