On the oldest map in the world, a map of the gold districts in Nubia, in the nineteenth dynasty of Egypt, there is a mention of the “memorial stone of King Mineptah I. Seti I.” And that memorial stone, of this new threshold of domain, marked the boundary line of empire in that direction.[497]
Rameses II. had it recorded on the walls of the rock grotto of Bayt-el-Walli concerning his threshold extensions: “The deeds of victory are inscribed a hundred thousand times on the glorious Persea. As the chastiser of the foreigners, _who has placed his boundary-marks according to his pleasure_ in the land of the Ruthennu, he is in truth the son of Ra, and his very image.”[498]
On the eastern border of Lower Egypt, the main passage way from the Delta into Arabia, the great gateway of the empire toward the north and the east, is still known as _El Gisr_, or “The Threshold.”[499] This point is near Lake Timsah, on the line of the modern Suez Canal.
In ancient Greece, Theseus “set up a pillar,” as a threshold stone between Peloponnesus and Attica,–then called Ionia,–“writing upon it an epigram in two trimeters, bounding the land. Of these [inscriptions] the one toward the east side said, ‘This is not Pelopennesus, but Ionia,’ and that toward the west, ‘This is Pelopennesus, not Ionia.’”[500]
Even the term, the “Pillars of Hercules,” as the boundaries of the Grecian empire and the then known world, is an indication of this idea in the classic age, as well as in the primitive mind. Calpë and Abyla were the door-posts of the great outer passage way, and the threshold between those pillars was founded upon the seas, and established upon the floods.[501]
As showing that the term “threshold” is not applied to these boundary stones merely by accommodation, it is sufficient to quote from Justinian in the case. He declares specifically that “as the threshold makes a certain boundary in a house, so also the ancients designed that the boundary of the empire should be its threshold; hence it is called the ‘threshold,’ as if it were a certain bound and term.”[502] Speaking of one who has been in foreign captivity, and who desires a resumption, or a restoration, of his civil rights, on his coming back to his country, Justinian says that such a return “is called _postliminium_ [a recrossing of the threshold], because at that same threshold the thing which he has lost is restored to him.”[503]