Heliopolis.—No excavations have yet been undertaken at Heliopolis, the City of the Sun, which is situated some nine miles from Cairo in a north-easterly direction. It was a very ancient city, of great celebrity as a seat of the worship of the sun god Ra, whose symbol in the form of the living bull Mnevis, was there kept and cared for and reverenced. In the Bible the city is called On or Beth Shemesh. Joseph probably served Potiphar in this city; and Pharaoh afterwards gave him to wife Asenath, daughter of Potiphera, a priest of On. There can be little doubt, either, that Moses, who was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, was educated at this seat of learning. We must believe, therefore, that he often looked upon the six obelisks which stood in front of the temple of Ra—one of which remains to this day—for they had been erected centuries before his birth. Four of them were set up by Thothmes III. and his family, about 1600 years before the Christian era, and the other two by Usertesen I. upwards of 3000 years B.C. Two of the Thothmes obelisks were at a later period transferred to Alexandria, to adorn the approach of a magnificent temple erected in honour of the Cæsars; and it is one of these two which has become known as Cleopatra's Needle and now stands on the Thames Embankment. The one obelisk which remains at Heliopolis is the oldest object of the kind in the world.
Scarcely anything is now to be seen of the city itself. It no doubt served as a handy quarry to the builders of Cairo; but since the surviving obelisk is buried 3 or 4 feet in Nile mud, it is not improbable that many small objects of antiquarian interest are buried also. Moreover, the sides of the vast enclosure in which the temple was situated are still marked by mounds or walls of crude brick, and these, on the north side, have their continuation in the ruins of the ancient town. Here are frequently found scarabæi or images of the sacred beetle, with other
