Page:The Religion of Ancient Egypt.djvu/97

 at Oxford the monument of a man whose priestly office had been endowed by a king of the second dynasty. Excellent scholars like Dr. Hincks and Mr. Goodwin have ascribed the monument to this early date, and have considered it the most ancient of all dated monuments. This indeed cannot be proved; but there is no doubt whatever that it is the most ancient authentic monument recording a religious endowment.

Temples.

No temples of the ancient empire are extant at present, except perhaps the monument discovered some years ago in the neighbourhood of the great Sphinx; but no one can say whether this is a temple or a tomb. But this want of early temples is certainly owing to the destruction of the most ancient cities, like Memphis and Heliopolis. There is no reason for doubting the inscription first published by M. de Rougé, which says that Chufa or Cheops built his pyramid near a temple of Isis, and that he built or endowed a temple to Hathor; or the inscriptions at Dendera, which ascribe the restoration of its ancient temple to Tehutimes III., "according to the plan found in ancient writings of the time of king Chufu." There is every reason for believing that in the ancient empire great and splendid temples were built. But we must not take for granted that temples at this early period were places of worship in our modern sense of the term. At no period of the