TELL. ARAB. A mound, generally ruins of some ancient city, as _the mound or tumulus of Kala Jerablus, the ancient Carchemish, on the west bank of the Euphrates, rising in places 100 feet above the Euphrates. At Babylon, the Mujalibah, the Atnran, and Jumguma mounds mark the sites of the palaces and temples of the mother city of Western Asia civilisation. At Nineveh, the Koyunjik and Nabbi Yunus mounds mark the sites of the palaces of Assyria's kings ; and at Kala Shergat or A88111, at Nimrud or Kalah, in N. Syria, cities of tho Hittites, and on the banks of the I.,ower Euphrates, those of the cities of the Chaldteans.
Tell-el-Yahudi, the mound of the Jews, is 20 miles from Cairo, on the site of 3fatarieh or Heliopolis, the biblical On. It has long been regarded as enclosing the site of the temple built by Guilts, the Jewish high priest, who led the colony of his countrymen front Jerusalem to Egypt, when the holy city and its temple were desecrated by king Antiochus Epiphanes (n.c. 168). The description of this temple given by Josephiis is that it was built on the site of a deserted shrine dedicated to the Egyptian goddess Bask, statues of which divinity had accordingly been found at Tell-el-Yahudi, and that it was filially closed by Paulinus, after the destruction of Jerusalem. Excavations were made in the mound in 1870, when it was found that it covered the site of a walled enclosure, about half a mile long and a quarter broad, the best preserved portions of the walls being 15 feet thick, built in three thicknesses, much as the walls of the tomb of Osiris at Abydos. In the enclosure were found a subterranean passage descending under a part of the mound still unexplored, several broken statues, and a square chamber, enclosed by walls of well-cut limestone blocks, and paved with finely-polished alabaster slabs.
In this chamber were four detached pedestals, two of which are in the Boulak 3fuseum. The .walls have been burned into lime ',by the Arabs. The chief objects of interest were the decorations of the chamber, which were of tiles, of a type hitherto unknown before medimval thnes. Many of these tiles were brought to the British Museum. The ornamental tiles are of various kinds ; all have patterns upon them; but some are simply in relief, and glazed with the ordinary bluish-green glaze so well known in the little Egyptian sepulchral statuettes ; others are inlaid with tnosaics, others with brilliant enamels. No such work is known to have been used either by the Egyptians or Assyrians in decorating their walls, although painted bricks were common enough, and mosaic and enamelled work were commonly used by both nations in stnall objects of personal ornament. In Persia, inlaid enamelled tiles have been need for many centuries ; but no antique specimens are known. The greater part of the tiles from Tell-el-Yahudi are purely Egyptian in design, and many of them bear a title of Rameses fir. ; but some others (always of a circular form and without hieroglyphics) are distinguished from the rest by having stamped upon them, on the reverse side, the Greek letters A and E.