Behbeit-Hagar
South West of the Provincial capital Al-Mansura (in the northern delta) lies Behbeit el-Hagar .It holds the impressive remains of a shrine to the goddess Isis, as can be seen from the names of the location in classical antiquity, Iseum or Isidis Oppidum.
The Arabic name for the village, Behbeit, still contains the pharaonic name Hebyt. The temple now lies in ruins but the complex (1170 X 680 feet or 360 X 210 metres) is enclosed by a great wall built of unfired Nile mud tiles, while the temple itself covered an area 260 X 178 feet (80 X 55 metres). The temple building has totally collapsed, probably due to an earthquake, and now the visitor finds only a confusion of granite blocks and other architectural fragments.
The Temple of Isis
Ptolemaic period, 3rd century B.C
Relief block showing Ptolemy II
The shrine to Isis may well have been erected to replace an older site dating from the Saitic period (Twenty-sixth Dynasty). Nectanebo II of the Thirtieth Dynasty is known to be the first ruler who built in Behbeit, but his building was never completed owing to the Persian invasion in 343 B.C. So it was left to the two early Ptolemaic rulers, Ptolemy II Philadelphos (282-246 B.C.) and his successor Ptolemy III Euergetes I (246-222 B.C.) to decorate the temple with reliefs. They are all in hard stone, including black and red granite, and their quality is outstanding. The ritual shown here depicts Ptolemy II (on the right) handing the god Osiris a pectoral (a decorative breastplate) and a necklace. The god is not shown here in the form of a mummy; he is entirely anthropomorphic, with an Atef crown over his wig.
Wall Fragments in the Sanctuary Area
More recent studies have utilized the great variety and quantity of the surviving frag- ments of the building, like wall blocks, parts of columns, concave molding and the bases of stairways to reconstruct the ground plan of the shrine. At present, however, there are no plans to rebuild the temple, for that would require the blocks that were removed in the 19th and 20th centuries and are now scattered through- hout the world in various collections to be reunited. The temple had a plain façade, behind which stretched a great columned hall with Hathor columns of Aswan granite. Then the axis line led into the barque sanctuary for the main divinities Isis and Osiris;; this was enclosed in a wreath of chapels. The most important scenes on the long w alls of the sanctuary show the Ptolemaic King (wearing the crown of Upper Egypt) burning incense before the sacred barque of Isis, the ˝?goddess of Hebyt˝?;; her head, with cow's horns and the disc of the sun, has survived here.
The Nile ـ The Lifeblood of Egypt
The Greek historian Herodotus (5th century B.C.) called the Nile ˝?the father of Egypt, ˝? and one must agree that he was right. For it is only the oasis created by the flooding of the Nile with its broad delta that enabled a viable agri- culture to evolve and provide food for the people. The Egyptians called their land ˝?Kemet, ˝? the black land, in reference to the dark mud, rich in minerals, that were deposited every year when the water retreated after the flood. The Nile floods were a blessing and a curse at once, for they could vary greatly in depth. Depending on the rainfall in the Ethiopian uplands, the level of the floods in Egypt (from August to November) could vary by several metres. lf it was too low there would not be enough arable land to feed the people, and if the waters rose too high they caused catastrophic destruction. Egypt's dependence on the Nile, which is the second longest river in the world et 4,160 miles (6,670 km),
Is also evident in the names given in the texts for the three periods into which the year was divided, the floods, the season of crop sowing and the harvest. The river was wor- shipped as a god under the name Hapy. He is depicted as a fat man with breasts like a Woman, physical features that clearly express the idea of fertility and good care. He often appears on temple reliefs as the bringer of gifts, bearing a plate of offerings in his hands. Among his many additional names Hapy is referred to as the one "flooding the two lands with life-giving water" and even "Wet nurse of the whole land" or simply as "the river" The nature and importance of the god was also celebrated in a great hymn from the time of the Middle Kingdom. The high esteem in which the god and his gifts were held is evident in the words "One does not get drunk on silver, and one cannot eat lapis lazuli. But barley is the food of life "Therefore, since the Old Kingdom, in virtually every temple of the country a representation of Hapy could be found, often together with other fecundity deities. In their myths the Egyptians put the sources of the Nile at the southern frontier of their kingdom, south of Elephantine and not far from the first cataract. The Egyptian guide to Herodotus also referred to this when he told the Greek historian that "the sources of the Nile spring forth amid the hills from a bottomless depth, and one half of the water flows northwards to Egypt while the other flows south to Ethiopia."