On

A city in Lower Egypt, Gn 4140. © 46” (Potiphera, priest of On). In Ezk 30" it occurs again, but punctuated py AVEN (which see). On is the hieroglyphic Anu, the name of Heliopolis. In Jer 43" the city is called Beth- shemesh, ‘ House of the Sun,’ the hieroglyphic Per fia, its sacred name. The name On seems gradually to have fallen into disuse; the Greeks called the place ᾿Ἡλιούπολις, from which the Coptic name is also derived. In the Bible, however, both Gr. and Copt. VSS retained the name On.

LXX gives in Jer 43 [Gr. 50] 13 rods στύλους Ἡλίου πόλεως τοὺς ἐν “Qv, and in Ex 1" curiously adds to Pithom and Raamses Ὧν ἢ ἐστιν Ἡλίου πόλις as another city built by the children of Israel. The ruins of Heliopolis lie on the E. edge of the Delta, but out- side the Delta proper, touching the edge of the desert, not far below the forking of the Nile. The city was built partly on the desert, partly on alluvium.

Its site is now marked by a considerable mound surrounded by a massive crude brick wall. In the area occupied anciently by the temple there still stands an obelisk, erected by Usertesen 1. of the 12th Dynasty, the base hardly above the level of the water that percolates from the canals ; and though blocks from the ancient temple are still lying in numbers under the soil, the rise of the water-level makes it extremely difficult to recover them.

On the fall of paganism the site was plundered of its building materials for the adorn- ment of Alexandria, Cairo, and other towns in Lower Egypt. Entire obelisks had previously been removed to Alexandria (by Augustus), to Rome, and to Constantinople, and, with the exception of some monuments in museums and of the obelisk men- tioned above as being still in situ, the chief monu- ments of Heliopolis now existing are the obelisks of Rome, Constantinople, London, and New York.

Anu was the capital of the 13th nome of Lower Egypt (which nome was probably bounded by the desert on the E., the Delasing branch of the Nile on the N., the Memphitic nome on the S., and the nome of Phacusa [20th] on the N.E.), but its great importance was sacerdotal, and due to its chief temple of Ra, the centre of Sun worship in Foyer and the most important seat of learning in the J, On the son of Peleth (v.14) and Korah (not a descendant of Levi, as P makes him in v.!

4, but) a kinsman of Caleb (cf. 1 Ch | 24), were the leaders of the Jay revolt against Moses, while the leaders in E are Dathan and Abiram (v.’«). See, further Noumpgrs, p. 570%. ONAM country. Like other sacred centres, this city is found mentioned in some of the earliest inscrip- tions, dating from the 4th Dynasty. It is recorded of Usertesen I. (about B.c. 2500) that he built, te. rebuilt, the temple.

Perhaps the greatest event in its early history was the temporary suppression of Ra worship and the substitution for it of Set worship by the Hyksos, as recorded in a dhe of the Ramesside period, now in the British Museum. A contemporary papyrus (also in the British Museum), known in science as the Mathematical papyrus, and written in the reign of Apepa I., indicates that the Hyksos court sojourned sometimes at Helio- lis, sometimes at Zaru (Avaris?)

These two ocuments show the great importance of Heliopolis at the time of the Hyksos, 9 Lower Egypt was a separate kingdom. Memphis apparently was less favoured by the Hyksos, though probably it was Dp ray y in their power, while Upper Egypt seems only to have acknowledged their suzerainty. On the expulsion of the Hyksos by the first ee of the 18th Dynasty, Ra worship was restored, an the temple of Ra at Heliopolis was rebuilt or re- adorned long before any other temple in or near the Delta.

Monuments of Tahutmes II. have been found here, while elsewhere in Lower Egypt outside Memphis nothing is found of the New Kingdom earlier than Amenhotep ΠΙ., whose cartouche occurs at Bubastis and Athribis. Like many of his prede- cessors, Ramses III. made great gifts to this temple, and the pious Ethiopian invader, Piankhi, in his great inscription from Gebel Barkal, dwells on the ceremonies that he performed here.

In Roman times it fell rapidly from its high estate; even Strabo notes its partial desertion. It lay on the road from Syria to Memphis, and thus was peculi- arly exposed to attack from the most formidable quarter: important battles have been fought on this site again and again, and even in modern times. It is difficult to say to what period the priest Potiphera, the father-in-law of Joseph, belonged.

His name being compounded with that of Ra, shows that it does not date from Hyksos times, 15-16th Dynasties, when Set overshadowed everything. But the form of the name was very common from the 23rd Dynasty onward (c. B.C. 800), though hardly known as early even as the 20th. Zaphe- nath-paneah (Gn 41) is also a form of name be- longing almost solely to the same late period (see PHARAOH).

_ The Sun-god was worshipped at Heliopolis first in the form of Ra; ΙΠΙΣ as Tum, the setting sun ; thirdly, as Harakhti, the hawk of the horizon, called by the Greeks Harmakhis; fourthly, as Khepera, figured by a scarabeeus, and s bolang the vivifying and reproductive force of the sun. Of sacred animals here the bull Mnevis was the most important; and the heron, called dnw, was the original of the famous phenix. From the earliest times obelisks were connected with the Sun worship (cf.

Jer 43 [Beth-shemesh]). There was also a sacred pool or spring, mentioned especially by Piankhi, ‘in which was wont to wash his face’; hence the Arab. name for this locality is ‘Ain esh-shems, ‘spring of the sun.” In Christian story this is the spring in which the Virgin washed her son while resting in the shade of an acacia tree on her journey into Egypt. The latest successor to the tree is still shown in an enclosure at Matariyeh. See AVEN, BETH-SHEMESH. F. Lu. GRIFFITH.