A statue base and a wrecked temple carry Egypt's case for the lost city of Mesn

Fixing an ancient name to a mound is an argument about whether the name sat still. A divine epithet does not sit still: it belongs to a cult, and cults travel with their priests and their portable objects. That is why Gregory Mumford's point carries weight, that similar inscriptions mentioning Mesn have been found at other sites in the region ^[19], and why the ministry's own wording stops at a strong possibility rather than an identification ^[7]. What makes the label worth arguing over is Peter Brand's reading of the place as one of the jumping-off points for Egyptian armies heading to Canaan, Lebanon and Syria ^[13].

The part of the announcement that does positional work is a match between a text and an object in the same ground. Brand, a historian at the University of Memphis who was not involved in the excavation, notes that the new inscription describes Ramesses II restoring a statue of Horus of Mesen ^[16], and that the pedestal of a statue like it had already been found at the site ^[17]. Two records of one act of royal patronage in one location is a better link than either on its own. The thing this doesn't tell you is whether the pedestal was found where it stood, and for an object whose evidential value here is its immobility, that is the detail worth waiting for.

A temple would ordinarily settle much of this. Hesham Hussein, who helped lead the work for Egypt's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, told Live Science that the Horus temple at the site was almost completely destroyed and hard to get much information from ^[5]. Brand calls the temple of Horus of Mesen the most important religious center in its area ^[15]; what is left of it at Tell Abu Seifi is a thin witness to that.

Most of the site's other Mesn evidence is late. A bronze seal from the Ptolemaic period, roughly 304 to 30 B.C., reads "Horus, Lord of Mesen", and Ptolemaic coffins from the site carry similar inscriptions ^[9]. Set the end of Ramesses II's reign, about 1213 B.C. ^[2], against the start of the Ptolemaic period, about 304 B.C., and the same divine title brackets roughly 909 years at one location ^[20]. Cult persistence of that length is interesting in itself, and it is not a measurement of a city: Hussein said that while the archaeological identification remains uncertain, no reliable estimate of Mesn's extent or population can be offered ^[8].

James Hoffmeier, of Trinity International University, calls the case strong and wants ceramics from the site before he is sure ^[18]. Pottery cannot name a place. It can say when the place was occupied and how continuously, which is the control on an argument currently built from one royal text and a set of later objects bearing the same god's title.