Page:Books on Egypt and Chaldaea, Vol. 32--Legends of the Gods.pdf/98

 standing near the rock, unless he is aware of its exist­ence. It is in full view of the river-path which leads from Mahallah to Philae, and yet it escaped the notice of scores of travellers who have searched the rocks and islands in the Cataract for graffiti and inscriptions. The inscription, which covers a space six feet by five feet, was discovered accidentally on February 6th, 1889, by the late Mr. C. E. Wilbour, a distinguished American gentleman who spent many years in research in Egypt. He first copied the text, discovering in the course of his work the remarkable nature of its contents and then his friend Mr. Maudslay photographed it. The following year he sent prints from Mr. Maudslay’s negatives to Dr. Brugsch, who in the course of 1891 published a transcript of the text with a German trans­lation and notes in a work entitled Die biblischen sieben Jahre der Hungersnoth, Leipzig, 8vo.

The legend contained in this remarkable text describes a terrible famine which took place in the reign of Tcheser, a king of the IIIrd Dynasty, and lasted for seven years. Insufficient Nile-floods were, of course, the physical cause of the famine, but the legend shows that the “low Niles” were brought about by the neglect of the Egyptians in respect of the worship of the god of the First Cataract, the great god Khnemu. When, according to the legend, king Tcheser had been made to believe that the famine took place because men had ceased to worship Khnemu in a manner appropriate to his greatness, and when he 