The description Herodotos gives of the position of the temple is still true to-day. The temple, which he pronounced to be the prettiest in Egypt, is now in ruins, like the houses and streets that encircled it. But the visitor to Tel-Bast still looks down upon its site from the rubbish-mounds of the ruined habitations, and can still trace the beds of the canals which were carried round it. Even the street which led to the market-place is still visible, and Dr. Naville has found the remains of the little temple which Herodotos supposed to be that of Hermês, the Egyptian Thoth. In this, however, he was wrong. Like the larger edifice, it was dedicated to Bast, and seems to have been used as a treasury. It was, therefore, under the protection of Thoth, whose figure decorated its walls, and Dr. Naville is doubtless right in believing that this has led to the mistake of Herodotos or his guides. Osorkon I. consecrated in it large quantities of precious things, including about £130,300 in gold and £13,000 in silver—an evident proof that the internal condition of his kingdom was flourishing. Dr. Naville’s excavations were undertaken for the Egypt Exploration Fund in 1887-89, and were chiefly made among the broken columns and dislocated stones of the larger temple. They have given us the outlines of its history. Like most of the great temples of Egypt, its foundation went back to the very beginning of Egyptian civilisation. The Pharaohs of the Old Empire repaired or enlarged it, and the names of Kheops and Khephren, as well as of Pepi I., have been found upon its blocks. The kings of the twelfth and thirteenth dynasties embellished it, and even the Hyksos princes did the same. In the days when they had adopted the culture and customs of Egypt and were holding royal state at Zoan, two of them at least restored and beautified the temple of Bubastis and called themselves the sons of Ra. One of them, Apophis, may have been the Apophis whose demand that the vassal-king of Thebes should worship Sutekh instead of Amon brought about the war of independence; the other, Khian User-n-Set-Ra, the Iannas of Manetho, has engraved his name on a colossal lion which was carried to Babylon by some Chaldæan conqueror.