Amid the ruins of Ascum, also, the ancient capital of that country, various fragments of marble have been found bearing the name and title of the same Egyptian sovereign.  This empty fame, however, is the only return that ever recompensed the toils of Euergetes among the fierce barbarians of the south.

Euergetes, as part of his general policy of conciliating the Egyptians, enlarged the great temple at Thebes, which is now called the temple of Karnak, on the walls of which we see him handing an offering to his father and mother, the brother-gods.  In one place he is in a Greek dress, which is not common on the Ptolemaic buildings, as most of the Greek kings are carved upon the walls in the dress of the country.  The early kings had often shown their piety to a temple by enlarging the sacred area and adding a new wall and gateway in front of the former; and this custom Euergetes followed at Karnak.  As these grand stone sculptured gateways belonged to a wall of unbaked bricks which has long since crumbled to pieces, they now stand apart like so many triumphal arches.  He also added to the temple at Hibe in the Great Oasis, and began a small temple at Esne, or Latopolis, where he is drawn upon the walls in the act of striking down the chiefs of the conquered nations, and is followed by a tame lion.

[Illustration:  161.jpg GATE AT KARNAK]

He built a temple to Osiris at Canopus, on the mouth of the Nile; for, notwithstanding the large number of Greeks and strangers who had settled there, the ancient religion was not yet driven out of the Delta; and he dedicated it to the god in a Greek inscription on a plate of gold, in the names of himself and Berenice, whom he called his wife and sister.  She is also called the king’s sister in many of the hieroglyphical inscriptions, as are many of the other queens of the Ptolemies who were not so related to their husbands.  This custom, though it took its rise in the Egyptian mythology, must have been strengthened by the marriages of Philadelphus and some of his successors with their sisters.  In the hieroglyphical inscriptions he is usually called “beloved by Phtah,” the god of Memphis, an addition to his name which was used by most of his successors.

During this century the Greek artists in Egypt, as indeed elsewhere, adopted in their style an affectation of antiquity, which, unless seen through, would make us think their statues older than they really are.  They sometimes set a stiff beard upon a face without expression, or arranged the hair of the head in an old-fashioned manner, and, while making the drapery fly out in a direction opposed to that of the figure, gave to it formal zigzag lines, which could only be proper if it were hanging down in quiet.  At other times, while they gave to the human figure all the truth to which their art had then reached, they yet gave to the drapery these stiff zigzag forms.

[Illustration:  163.jpg RUINS OF SAIS]