ANCIENT EGYPT AND ANGORA
By Dr. J. RENDEL HARRIS
[Dr. Rendel Harris, whose speculations on the penetration of the early Egyptians, based on bold philological conjectures, are well known, suggests reasons for believing that the Turkish capital, Angora, was once the centre of an extensive Egyptian colony.] ANGORA, the new Turkish capital, is, according to a recent article by the Constantinople correspondent of The Times, to become a new Byzantium in the heart of Asia Minor. What might have been pointed out, but was not, is that Ancyra, or Angora, has in reality a much longer history than Constantinople itself, and was, in fact, an ancient Egyptian centre. This is a subject on which little light has so far been cast. It was long before I myself realised that the Egyptians had made excursions northward either for trade, .exploration or the acquisition of metals. Tradition was altogether against the existence of any Egypt outside Egypt itself. I think my first suspicion of the correctness of this view arose when I began to realise that the island of Patmos had an Egyptian name, that it was in fact the same name as we had in the beginning of Exodus, where we are told that the Israelites built for Pharaoh treasure cities called " Pithom and Raamses." So this, I concluded, was the outpost and most northerly point reached by Egyptian navigators. It was not, however, very long after that I made the discovery that the city and bay of Adramyttium at the north of the Aegean Sea actually bore the name of the south- west province of Arabia known to travellers as Adramaut. If one was to draw the natural deduction, and admit that Arabian traders had come into the Mediterranean on such a large scale, we could hardly reject the thought that the Egyptians may have done the same ; which would mean taking their ships into the Black Sea and within sight of the Caucasus and within range of the Caspian. Most of these excursions, indeed, were mainly nautical. It was the natural thing to creep up the western coast of Asia bfinor and feel their way through the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus and so along the northern coast of Asia Minor itself. But this, there was soon reason to believe, was not the complete solution. One of the oldest kingdoms in Asia Minor was that which went by the name of Galatia, and we were told by classical tradition that it consisted of three provinces, the first of them Ancyra, the second Tavium, and the third Pessinus, the capital cities of the three provinces bearing the names in question. Now these were com- monly supposed to be three Keltic provinces, the Kelt.s having settled in the very middle of Asia Minor. But here a difficulty arose. The names of the tribes were very hard to decipher from a Keltic point of view. Ancyra was said to be the capital of the Tectosages ; Tavium of the Trocmi, and Pessinus of the Tolisto-bogi. It was difficult to identify these names with the Keltic tradition, or indeed to give them any meaning at all, and one had to look round and see what was the meaning of these three connected provinces with the queer. names.
The first answer came from researches of my own in West Africa, from which it appeared that Ancyra was better known to us as the modern Angora. The modern metropolis of.Turkey was thus the same as Angra which occurs so frequently in West Africa and elsewhere. But Angra is clearly Egyptian, and means the Life of Ra ; so this interesting city, certainly one of the old-world cities, had an Egyptian name. I have visited it myself when engaged on relief work in Asia Minor, and seen the magnificent monument set up by Augustus in his own honour, which is familiar to classical scholars and charged with interest—bearing, as it does, one of the great inscriptions in Roman history. But if Angora was Egyptian, what about the other two provinces that were clearly connected with Angora Here fresh ground is broken. The middle of the three was known as Tavium, and Tavium was a central meeting-place of the roads that went east and west and north and south through Asia Minor—a place of the first importance. Its name was quite obviously a Latinised form for Tavi. Row with Tavi I was already well acquainted. First of all it is another word for Egypt, meaning the Two Kingdoms. Next it was a name that was widely current in Britain, as for instance in the case of the river TaVy which, after confluence with the Tamar; runs into Plymouth Sound. So here was a second Egyptian name. The third name I have not yet discovered, but as the three provinces with the three cities must be connected one with the other, we may say without much hesitation that there were three Egyptian provinces. with Egyptian colonial centres on a highway running north and south through Anatolia. Now this is a very interesting discovery, for it takes us to an earlier point than any Keitic settlement or migration, and brings the Egyptians where we were expecting to find them, near the southern shores of the Euxine. Thus it may be concluded with confidence that the Egyptians reached the Black Sea and ultimately the Caspian Sea, not only by a nautical route, but also by a direct line of travel across Asia Minor itself. It puts Egyptian culture and its migration into quite a new light. Classical scholars had missed the maik in their interpretation of the pre-dynastic history of Egypt.
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