Sais
| Sais in hieroglyphics | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Sow (Zau) S3w (Z3w) |
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| Greek | Σάϊς (Sais) | |||||
_-_1.006_RUINS_OF_SAIS_IN_THE_DELTA.jpg) |
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Sais (also Saïs , Greek Σάϊς ; ancient Egyptian Sau, Zau , today Arabic صا الحجر Sa al-Hagar , DMG Ṣā al-Ḥaǧar ) is the Greek name of an ancient Egyptian city in the western Nile Delta , in today's Kafr al-Sheikh governorate .
The city has appeared in ancient Egyptian texts since the Old Kingdom . Excavations have shown that the site has been around since 4000 BC. Was settled.
history
Coordinates: 30 ° 58 ' N , 30 ° 46' E
Nebet-Sau as the mistress of Sais has been the main goddess since the Middle Kingdom . It was mostly the appearance of the Neith , who also had a large temple here. In addition, in is the New Kingdom and courage and in the late period Hathor as Lady of Sais witnessed.
Psammetich I , who probably came from Sais, moved the capital of the country here and founded the so-called Saitic dynasty. Sais was then the center of the Greek-Egyptian trade. Herodotus describes the temple complex with the tombs of the 26th Dynasty . The kings of the 26th dynasty (664-525 BC) came from Sais. Little remains of the city.
The kings of Sais
reception
A classic topos since antiquity and the early Enlightenment is the alleged inscription above the entrance of the Temple of Isis , which concerns the solitude of God and his concealment (veiling). It probably finds its climax in Friedrich Schiller , Die Sendung Moses (1790) and Vom Erhöhenen (1793), but also in Kant , Critique of Judgment (1790). Schiller's ballad The veiled picture for Sais (1795) takes up the theme again.
The romantic poet Novalis wrote the fragmentary novel Die Lehrlinge zu Sais , which focuses on the knowledge of nature, allegorized , among other things, by her embodiment in the goddess Isis and her unveiling.
literature
- Hans Bonnet : Sais. In: Lexicon of Egyptian Religious History. Nikol, Hamburg 2000, ISBN 3-937872-08-6 , p. 646 f.
- Thorwald C. Franke: With Herodotus on the trail of Atlantis. Could Atlantis have been a real place after all? Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2006, ISBN 978-3-8334-6511-6 .
- Ramadan El-Sayed: Documents relatifs à Saïs et ses Divinités (= Bibliothèque d'étude. (BiEtud) Volume 49). Institut Français d'archéologie orientale du Caire, Le Caire 1975.
Web links
- Alexander Schütze: Sais. In: Michaela Bauks, Klaus Koenen, Stefan Alkier (eds.): The scientific biblical lexicon on the Internet (WiBiLex), Stuttgart 2006 ff., Accessed on May 26, 2012.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jan Assmann: Moses the Egyptian. Hanser. Munich 1998. ISBN 3-446-19302-2