See also: Saou

Know (in Greek old Σάϊς), as a former Egyptian His or Saou and nowadays Its El-Hagar , was the capital of the fifth names ( Neith of north ) of Low-Egypt in the Western delta of the the Nile. The city was located in antiquity on the canopic branch of the Nile. According to Plato (-427/-348, Greek philosopher ) in the Timée, of the priests of Know would have entrusted to Solon (-640/-558, statesman Athénien) the secrecy of the Atlantis.

History

The city is known at the beginning of the Egyptian history, one found labels out of wooden related to the king Aha (v. - 3080/v. - 3055) mentioning the city and its worship dedicated to Neith. However the political ascendance of the city was late. There is no more no trace of the city before the end Nouvel Empire (v. - 1100). It became capital of a vast kingdom made up to the VIII E by the big bosses Libou, who unified name them Western delta what gave rise to.

This one with its kings Tefnakht {{Ier}} (- 727/-716) and Bakenranef (or Bocchôris, -716/-715), fought to reunify Egypt by blocking the companies of conquest of the Ethiopian of and in their disputing Memphis. Thereafter it kept its statute with which became, of regional dynasty, the single dynasty of the country of -664 with -525. Know was then a hearth of civilization if brilliance that one spoke about “Renaissance saïte”. Lastly, after the first Persian invasion , it became again dynastic city of -404 with -399. The prince of Know, Amyrtée (-404/-399), carried out the revolt against the Perses and founded in -404.

At that time Neith, the guardian goddess of Know, supplanted Amon like first God of monarchy.

It is the creation of the town of Alexandria in -332, which marked the decline of Know. The city had also a temple of Isis. It is in this temple that Plutarque (40/120, biographer and Greek moralist ) indicates that on the tomb of Isis one finds the inscription at the origin of the legend of the Voile of Isis : “I am all that was, which is, which will be and no mortal still dared to raise my veil”.

The gods of Know

Neith was with the head of a true divine family with Know. As a paramount mother it was the matrix in which the god Re itself conceived and thus occupied the place of the demiurge that one finds in the majority of the system theological of the country like those of Hermopolis, of Héliopolis or Memphis. She then took the shape of a divine cow which received a worship particular to Know even whose Hérodote has can be to us left a testimony when he affirms to have seen in the royal palace of Amasis a room in which was exposed to the sight of a whole a statue out of wooden with the image of a cow lying whose gilded head was capped horns enclosing a gold disc representing the sun. One recognizes in this last description the traditional cap of the Egyptian goddesses carried by Hathor or Isis, with which Neith merged with Know.

Other gods formed the Pantheon which accompanied the goddess and had their sanctuary in the city even like Atoum or Osiris in the form of the Osiris Hémag . Besides know included/understood one of the tombs of Osiris, making this city one of the most crowned places country with other sites which comprised such sanctuaries like Abydos or Philae.

The ancient city

The city of Know was one of the principal stages of the festivals related to crowning or the jubilee of Pharaon. We know many dignitaries of the Ancient Empire priests or priestesses of the goddess Neith, demiurge whose origin is placed at Know by tradition. The sanctuary of the Château of the Red Crown is frequently associated with these functions and let suppose that Know was the place where one preserved the Desheret, divine demonstration of the royalty of Low-Egypt. Associated with the white crown of High-Egypt, the Hedjet, they formed the Pschent, or double crown, that the Egyptian sovereigns girded at the time of their accession to the throne of Horus. Another sanctuary is also frequently quoted by the sources of the Ancient Empire and the Moyen Empire: the Castle of the Bee .

Representations of these sanctuaries are found on the walls of certain tombs of the Ancient Empire until the Nouvel Empire showing a line of vaults bordered of palm tree along a driving channel with a temple represented in plan. Often symbolic systems these figurations are brought closer to a kind of temple or rather of téménos crowned related to the funerary rites which also finds with Bouto another city of the Delta of the Nile whose seniority is equal to that of Know. A representation of the antiquated temple of Neith was found on a found ebony shelf with Abydos in the name of the Pharaon Aha of. According to conventions of representation of the time a convincing restitution was proposed showing us a rectangular enclosure forming before court provided in frontage with two bulwarks and its center with a chechmate carrying a sign with the Neith goddess high. This court preceded a vault characteristic of the sanctuaries by Low-Egypt.

Temple even of Neith there exists nothing any more and it is difficult to have an idea of its splendor and its extent. At most can one index elements having belonged to him as the obelisks which decorated it of which one drawn up by Apriès today with Rome and two other fragmentary which was reconstituted in only one monument now visible with Urbino. A fragment of Naos preserved at the Museum of the royal arts of Brussels dating from the same time could be the only vestige of the sanctuary of the goddess unless it does not come from another temple of the city.

We have an evocation of the ancient city thanks to Hérodote which visited it with before our era. It indicates its principal monuments to us of which the royal palace of Apriès and Amasis and the necropolis royal quoting the tombs of Psammétique {{Ier}}, of Apriès and Amasis and in particular described the large temple of Neith which was decorated of a dromos of androsphinx, colossi of Pharaon, obelisks and gantries with palmiform columns. It also indicates the existence of a tomb of Osiris located behind the temple of the goddess, bordering a circular lake which it compares with that Délos. Ceremonies related to the worship of the god, in particular with his passion and its resurrection, took place there. The city was then the seat of one of the principal national festivals during which its inhabitants lit thousands of lamps, act pile imitated by the worldwide at the same time.

With before our era, Strabon quotes Know in its work that it realized at the time of its voyage in Egypt in company of the Roman troops which took possession of the Double Country following the victory of Octave over the troops of Marc Antoine and of Cléopâtre. It is not delayed to describe the city being satisfied to confirm the existence of the tomb of Psammétique {{Ier}} in the large temple of Neith and mentions the tomb of Osiris which it names “Asylòn”.

The city enjoyed a great prosperity then since the dynasties saïtes, it was famous for its ancestral worships and its radiation exceeded the borders. Its priests were especially known to know to them out of medical matter and the tradition wants that Know was the first seat of a medical school whose library on the matter had the already appearance of an encyclopedia. Many Greek scientists came to meet the priests of the goddess first stage of a intellectual pilgrimage which was to carry out them towards the great religious centers of Héliopolis and of Memphis.

The identification of the site goes back to the Expédition of Egypt of Bonaparte and the monumental description of the country which followed. Champollion will visit it and determine the site of the large temple of Neith in the large enclosure whose vestiges were still visible at the beginning of the 19th century. Here the description which it gives of Know in its Newspaper of Voyage of September 16th 1828: We saw already since Méniéh-Ghénagh, while looking in south-east, the remainders of the enormous enclosure which contained formerly the large monuments of this capital. These remains resemble long hills. (...) The extent of this enclosure is immense. We evaluated, by measuring it with the step, the length of the one on the small sides at least to fourteen hundred and forty feet and that on the two large sides of the parallelogram to two thousand hundred and sixty feet length, which gives a general circumference of seven thousand two hundred feet. The thickness of this raw brick enclosing wall built is of approximately fifty four centimetres. Its height can be estimated at eighty feet. (...) I saw towards the left, and occupying the medium over a very big length, a succession of colossal ruins taking shape under all kinds of odd forms and which, from the point of view where saw them, seemed to be the ruins of a palate of giant; but there exists such a disorder and if little agreement between the parts of this ruin which it is impossible to be formed a clear idea of the whole of the primitif. plan Outlining a plan being inspired largely by the description made by Hérodote it thus believed to recognize in the various monticules and ruins of the large enclosure principal elements described by the Greek author without being able to more push its explorations for lack of time.

With its continuation Lepsius, Mariette then Flinders Petrie carried out surveys and some excavations, but already the majority of the site had disappeared under the blows from a which gallop industrialization and a setting in systematic culture from the Delta from the Nile by the administration from the pasha d' Égypte in order to fulfill the requirements of the modernization of the country and they could not find the ruins that Champollion had seen a few thirty years before.

Its El-Haggar, the current village which rose near the ruins of the capital of names éponyme introduces today only rare vestiges which do not draw the attention of the tour operators and rare tourists who visit the delta of the the Nile, because of the confusion whose the quoted object the antique was. It was used as career like many of other sites country as from the 14th century in order to build the new towns of a news Egypt. The sebbakhins completed work with the research of the fertile materials which the sites of the delta include/understand, upsetting the little of vestiges which remained about it. By doing this they frequently reflect at the day of the statues and other relics of the antique Know which most of the time took the way of the foreign collections which started to be constituted in Western Europe, first steps of the Egyptian collections of future the museum nationals of the old continent. Art saïte being of an exceptional quality its production then was particularly appreciated and representative of the idea that one was made ancient Egypt then. It is completely probable that the majority of the intact or restored specimens that one can admire with the Louvre, with the British Museum or with the Egyptian Musée of Berlin come from even Know. One will quote in particular the statue naophore of Oudjahorresné preserved today at the museum of the the Vatican to Rome. This dignitary and priest of Neith with Know at the end of, lived the first Persian invasion and on his statue an autobiography delivered to us describing the monuments of the city and requesting its new Master Cambyse to order the restoration of the sanctuaries of the city. There is no doubt that this statue was placed in the middle same of the temple of the goddess with Know.

On the spot one can raise today in north and the south two principal sites which probably form the principal poles of the ancient city. In its maximum extension it extended then on nearly one kilometer and half on more than one half of width. In north the vestiges of a large enclosure are. Of square form of almost seven hundred meters on sides, it includes/understands two Kom S of which most imposing Kom Rebwa stretches north in the south on approximately three hundred meters. Signs characteristic of the sites of the delta indicating a long human occupation, these koms, or remains hills, are the result of the successive layers of the city which accumulated the ones over the others during the centuries.

In the distant south of approximately two hundred and fifty meters of the square enclosure, are the ruins of a gigantic Tel. of a surface of approximately twenty hectares in the medium of which a lake is. Excavations undertaken in the south of this lake revealed under several late levels of occupation, a great structure hones some including/understanding a wall which skirts the current lake. Part of this wall preserved on more than fifty meters presents a curved form. The excavations of the site also made it possible to put at the day various architectonic elements and some sculptors units going up the Low Time which for the moment are exposed in a small museum in the open air impromptu which joined together the whole of the discoveries, often fortuitous, carried out on the site since the years 1950.

Recent excavations

Since 1997 the Egypt Exploration Society in collaboration with the University of Durham, carries out excavations to it. The result of these ten years of campaigns of surveys, stratigraphic, ceramologic studies and of excavations partial of principal the koms of the site one revealed that the city existed already at Neolithic times.

An archaeological level containing of ceramics and other traces being connected with those discovered on the contemporary sites of Bouto or Maadi confirms that Know was already at this high time an important urban establishment. These excavations also showed that at that time the city was like the antique Bouto a double city with two districts distinct goods which faced.

In Kom Rebwa the excavations determined levels of occupation of and indicating the urban expansion at that time ostentation for the country.

Finally a great stone structure was detected in the levels going up at the time saïte, of which in particular foundations of a pylon which would have reached dimensions comparable with those of the first pylon of the temple of Amon-Re of Karnak indicating the scale of the sanctuary of the goddess who was at ancient times to support the comparison with the capital thebaine.

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