soldiers of one of the kings named Psammetichus (apparently Psammetichus II., 594–589 B.C.) inscribed their names upon the two southern colossi, doubtless the only ones then clear of sand. These graffiti are of the highest value for the early history of the alphabet, and as proving the presence of Greek mercenaries in the Egyptian armies of the period. The upper part of the second colossus (from the south) has fallen; the third was repaired by Sethos II. not many years after the completion of the temple. This great temple was wholly rock-cut, and is now threatened by gradual ruin by sliding on the planes of stratification. A small temple, immediately to the south of the first, is believed to have had a built antechamber: it is the earliest known example of a “birth chapel,” such as was usually attached to Ptolemaic temples for the accommodation of the divine mother-consort and her son. The third and northernmost temple, separated from the others by a ravine, is on a large scale; the colossi of the façade are six in number and 53 ft. high, representing Rameses and his queen Nefrēre, who dedicated the temple to the goddess Hathōr. The whole group forms a singular monument of Rameses’ unbounded pride and self-glorification.
See Egypt; J. H. Breasted, Ancient Records, Egypt, vol. iii. pp. 124 et seq., esp. 212; “The Temples of Lower Nubia,” in the American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, October 1906. (F. Ll. G.)
ABŪ TAMMĀM [Ḥabīb ibn Aus] (807–846), Arabian poet, was, like Buḥturī, of the tribe of Ṭāi (though some say he was the son of a Christian apothecary named Thaddeus, and that his genealogy was forged). He was born in Jāsim (Josem), a place to the north-east of the Sea of Tiberias or near Manbij (Hierapolis). He seems to have spent his youth in Homs, though, according to one story, he was employed during his boyhood in selling water in a mosque in Cairo. His first appearance as a poet was in Egypt, but as he failed to make a living there he went to Damascus and thence to Mosul. From this place he made a visit to the governor of Armenia, who awarded him richly. After 833 he lived mostly in Bagdad, at the court of the caliph Moʽtasim. From Bagdad he visited Khorassan, where he enjoyed the favour of ʽAbdallah ibn Ṭāhir. About 845 he was in Maʽarrat un-Nuʽmān, where he met Buḥturī. He died in Mosul. Abu Tammām is best known in literature as the compiler of the collection of early poems known as the Hamāsa (q.v.). Two other collections of a similar nature are ascribed to him. His own poems have been somewhat neglected owing to the success of his compilations, but they enjoyed great repute in his lifetime, and were distinguished for the purity of their style, the merit of the verse and the excellent manner of treating subjects. His poems (Diwān) were published in Cairo (A.D. 1875).
See Life in Ibn Khallikan’s Biographical Dictionary, trans. by M‘G. de Slane (Paris and London, 1842), vol. i. pp. 348 ff.; and in the Kitāb ul-Aghāni (Book of Songs) of Abulfaraj (Bulaq, 1869), vol. xv. pp. 100-108. (G. W. T.)
ABUTILON (from the Arabic aubūtīlūn, a name given by Avicenna to this or an allied genus), in botany, a genus of plants, natural order Malvaceae (Mallows), containing about eighty species, and widely distributed in the tropics. They are free-growing shrubs with showy bell-shaped flowers, and are favourite greenhouse plants. They may be grown outside in England during the summer months, but a few degrees of frost is fatal to them. They are readily propagated from cuttings taken in the spring or at the end of the summer. A large number of horticultural varieties have been developed by hybridization, some of which have a variegated foliage.
ABUTMENT, a construction in stone or brickwork designed to receive and resist the lateral pressure of an arch, vault or strut. When built outside a wall it is termed a buttress.
ABŪ UBAIDA [Maʽmar ibn ul-Muthanna] (728–825), Arabian scholar, was born a slave of Jewish Persian parents in Baṣra, and in his youth was a pupil of AbūʽAmr ibn ul-ʽAlā. In 803 he was called to Bagdad by Harūn al-Rashīd. He died in Baṣra. He was one of the most learned and authoritative scholars of his time in all matters pertaining to the Arabic language, antiquities and stories, and is constantly cited by later authors and compilers. Jāhiz held him to be the most learned scholar in all branches of human knowledge, and Ibn Hishām accepted his interpretation even of passages in the Koran. The titles of 105 of his works are mentioned in the Fihrist, and his Book of Days is the basis of parts of the history of Ibn al-Athīr and of the Book of Songs (see Abulfaraj), but nothing of his (except a song) seems to exist now in an independent form. He is often described as a Kharijite. This, however, is true only in so far as he denied the privileged position of the Arab people before God. He was, however, a strong supporter of the Shuʽūbite movement, i.e. the movement which protested against the idea of the superiority of the Arab race over all others. This is especially seen in his satires on Arabs (which made him so hated that no man followed his bier when he died). He delighted in showing that words, fables, customs, &c., which the Arabs believed to be peculiarly their own, were derived from the Persians. In these matters he was the great rival of Asmaʽī (q.v.).
See Life in Ibn Khallikān’s Biographical Dictionary, trans. by M‘G. de Slane (Paris and London, 1842), vol. iii. pp. 388-398; also I. Goldziher’s Muhammedanische Studien (Halle, 1888), vol. i. pp. 194-206. (G. W. T.)
ABYDOS, an ancient city of Mysia, in Asia Minor, situated
at Nagara Point on the Hellespont, which is here scarcely a mile
broad. It probably was originally a Thracian town, but was
afterwards colonized by Milesians. Here Xerxes crossed the
strait on his bridge of boats when he invaded Greece. Abydos
is celebrated for the vigorous resistance it made against Philip V.
of Macedon (200 B.C.), and is famed in story for the loves of Hero
and Leander. The town remained till late Byzantine times the
toll station of the Hellespont, its importance being transferred
to the Dardanelles (q.v.), after the building of the “Old Castles”
by Sultan Mahommed II. (c. 1456).
See Choiseul-Gouffier, Voyage dans l’empire ottoman (Paris, 1842).
ABYDOS, one of the most ancient cities of Upper Egypt, about 7 m. W. of the Nile in lat. 26° 10′ N. The Egyptian name was Abdu, “the hill of the symbol or reliquary,” in which the sacred head of Osiris was preserved. Thence the Greeks named it Abydos, like the city on the Hellespont; the modern Arabic name is Arabet el Madfuneh. The history of the city begins in the late prehistoric age, it having been founded by the pre-Menite kings (Petrie, Abydos, ii. 64), whose town, temple and tombs have been found there. The kings of the Ist dynasty, and some of the IInd dynasty, were also buried here, and the temple was renewed and enlarged by them. Great forts were built on the desert behind the town by three kings of the IInd dynasty. The temple and town continued to be rebuilt at intervals down to the times of the XXXth dynasty, and the cemetery was used continuously. In the XIIth dynasty a gigantic tomb was cut in the rock by Senwosri (or Senusert) III. Seti I. in the XIXth dynasty founded a great new temple to the south of the town in honour of the ancestral kings of the early dynasties; this was finished by Rameses (or Ramessu) II., who also built a lesser temple of his own. Mineptah (Merenptah) added a great Hypogeum of Osiris to the temple of Seti. The latest building was a new temple of Nekhtnebf in the XXXth dynasty. From the Ptolemaic times the place continued to decay and no later works are known (Petrie, Abydos, i. and ii.).
The worship here was of the jackal god Upuaut (Ophoïs, Wepwoi), who “opened the way” to the realm of the dead, increasing from the Ist dynasty to the time of the XIIth dynasty and then disappearing after the XVIIIth. Anher appears in the XIth dynasty; and Khentamenti, the god of the western Hades, rises to importance in the middle kingdom and then vanishes in the XVIIIth. The worship here of Osiris in his various forms begins in the XIIth dynasty and becomes more important in later times, so that at last the whole place was considered as sacred to him (Abydos, ii. 47).
The temples successively built here on one site were nine or ten in number, from the Ist dynasty, 5500 B.C. to the XXVIth dynasty, 500 B.C. The first was an enclosure, about 30 ✕ 50 ft., surrounded by a thin wall of unbaked bricks. Covering one wall of this came the second temple of about 40 ft. square in a wall about 10 ft. thick. An outer temenos (enclosure) wall surrounded the ground. This outer wall was thickened about the IInd or
