Portraits Painted in Wax, from Roman Mummies, Hawara.

[See page 97.]

TEN YEARS’ DIGGING
IN EGYPT
1881-1891

BY
W. M. FLINDERS PETRIE
AUTHOR OF ‘PYRAMIDS OF GIZEH,’ ‘HAWARA,’ ‘MEDUM,’ ETC.
WITH A MAP
AND ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS
SECOND EDITION, REVISED
THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY
56 PATERNOSTER ROW, 65 ST. PAUL’S CHURCHYARD
AND 164 PICCADILLY
1893

‘In studying history, it must be borne in mind that a knowledge is necessary of the state of manners, customs, wealth, arts, and science at the different periods treated of. The text of civil history requires a context of this knowledge in the mind of the reader.’

Sir Arthur Helps on History.

PREFACE

Although the discoveries which are related in this volume have been already published, yet there is to be considered the large number of readers who feed in the intermediate regions between the arid highlands and mountain ascents of scientific memoirs, and the lush—not to say rank—marsh-meadows of the novel and literature of amusement.

Those, then, who wish to grasp the substance of the results, without the precision of the details, are the public for whom this is written; and I trust that, out of consideration for their feelings, hardly a single measurement or rigid statement can be found here from cover to cover. Any one who wants detail can find it in the various annual volumes which have already appeared. Several of the finest objects found appear here, however, for the first time in illustration; for having been kept in Egypt I only had photographs to work from, which were, as yet, unused.

The work described here is not by any means all that has occupied my time in these years; much exploring has also been done, and dozens of ancient towns have been visited, and their remains examined; but such work is rather a basis for further results than a source of interest in itself to the public. Besides this I have been occupied in Palestine.

I may as well remark that the first two years’ work were done entirely as a private matter; though the Royal Society afterwards made a grant to cover the greater part of the cost of its publication. The three following years’ work was carried on for the Egypt Exploration Fund; but as the management of that society was not what I had expected, I preferred to withdraw, without personal unpleasantness; in fact, some promoters of it have been more my friends since then than they were before. For a year I rather explored than excavated, having indeed no prospect of funds at my disposal for the purpose. But to my surprise, two supporters of the subject appeared independently, Mr. Jesse Haworth, and then Mr. Martyn Kennard; all expenses of excavation and transport in the last four years’ work, have been at their charge; and the objects found, and not kept for the Egyptian Museum, or retained for private friends, have been presented by them to various public collections. Thus three years have been private work, three years with the Fund, and four years with other friends.

One of the pleasantest results of my work has been the number of co-operators who have appeared, and the friendships that have resulted. In fact an informal body of workers have come together, all attracted by a real love of work, and not by publicity or the buttering and log-rolling of societies. Without any parade of empty names, or speechifying, we each know where to turn for co-operation, and how to join hands to help in the work.

To many the interest of these researches will be the solidity and reality which they give to what we only knew as yet on paper. When we read of ‘Pharaoh’s house in Tahpanhes,’ and then see Defenneh explaining the narrative,—when Ezekiel wrote of Javan being ‘merchants,’ and ‘going to and fro, occupied in the fairs’ of Tyre, and we see the widespread trade of the Ionians as early as Gurob,—when we read in Homer of the prehistoric civilization, and see the actual products of those races brought to light,—we feel how real was the life of which the outlines have come down to us across the ages.

I hope that among my readers there may be some who are not of the superficial class, for whom the tender-foot directions of guide-books are written, and the luxuries of hotels are provided as attractions; so I have given some hints as to how a traveller may go about in Egypt without the usual routine of coddling, and being led by the nose by a dragoman. If the active tripper is thereby induced to take an active trip in Egypt, and—contrary to the custom of most tourists—subordinate the stomach to the intellect, I shall be very glad to make his acquaintance there.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

KINGS AND DYNASTIES NAMED IN THIS VOLUME

Position of Places in Egypt named in this Volume.

1. The Pyramids of Gizeh.

CHAPTER I.
THE PYRAMIDS OF GIZEH.
1881-2.

When, in the end of 1880, I first started for Egypt, I had long been preparing for the expedition; during a couple of years before that measuring instruments, theodolites, rope-ladders, and all the impedimenta for scientific work, had been prepared and tested. To start work under circumstances so different from those of any European country, and where many customary appliances were not to be obtained, required necessarily much prearrangement and consideration; though on the whole my subsequent experience has been that of decreasing the baggage, and simplifying one’s requirements.

The first consideration on reaching Egypt was where to be housed. In those days there was no luxurious hotel close to the pyramids; if any one needed to live there, they must either live in a tomb or in the Arab village. As an English engineer had left a tomb fitted with door and shutters I was glad to get such accommodation. When I say a tomb, it must be understood to be the upper chamber where the Egyptian fed his ancestors with offerings, not the actual sepulchre. And I had three rooms, which had belonged to separate tombs originally; the thin walls of rock which the economical Egyptian left between his cuttings, had been broken away, and so I had a doorway in the middle into my living-room, a window on one side for my bedroom, and another window opposite for a store-room. I resided here for a great part of two years; and often when in draughty houses, or chilly tents, I have wished myself back in my tomb. No place is so equable in heat and cold, as a room cut out in solid rock; it seems as good as a fire in cold weather, and deliciously cool in the heat.

2. My Tomb at Gizeh.

I lived then, as I have since in Egypt, independent of servants. The facilities of preserved provisions, and the convenience of petroleum stoves, enable one to do without the annoyance of having some one about meddling with everything. I had one of the most intelligent men of the place, Ali Gabri, to help me with the work, and his nephew and slave used to sleep in the next tomb (on the right of the sketch) as my guards at night. Such was my first taste of sweet independence from civilization.

The object in view for which the work was undertaken was to decisively test the various theories concerning the pyramids, which were then being widely discussed on very insufficient knowledge. If all, or any, of these theories were correct, there were some very tough questions to be picked over between different parties; but the first question to be settled was whether the theories agreed with the actual facts of the case, as if they did not there was no need of further discussion. They must pass the test of fact before they could be further considered on the grounds of their abstract probability or metaphysical coherence. One of the most obvious of all the facts, and most deeply concerned in the various theories, was the actual size of the great pyramid; yet this was not known with any accuracy, the best measurements varying by several feet. Most of the theories involved the notion of extreme accuracy of workmanship, yet we were entirely ignorant of the amount of accuracy in the form of the pyramid, and in most of its internal construction.

It may not be amiss here to point out what is the meaning of accuracy. One often hears that something is ‘quite accurate.’ If I ask a workman if his work is accurate, he will indignantly refer to his foot-rule to prove it; but if you were to ask if his foot-rule is accurate he would doubt your sanity. What is accuracy for one purpose is inaccuracy for another. Children build castles on the sand, and make them perhaps tidy enough; but their accuracy would not do for laying out a garden; nor would the garden bed quite do to regulate the straightness of a tennis court. When a house is planned, still further particularity is needed for the accuracy of its squareness and straightness; and yet the joiner needs a better straight edge than the bricklayer. In turn the joiner’s ideas would never suffice for the accuracy of putting together a Forth bridge, with its lengths of furlongs of steel, needed to exactly fit into place. And even beyond that, the telescope maker, dividing his circles, or polishing his object glasses, must attend to quantities which are quite beyond the accuracies of the engineer. There are as many kinds of accuracy as there are of cleanliness, from the cleanness of a clean-swept path, up to the absolute lifelessness and chemical purity of some tedious preparation in the laboratory.

There is, therefore, no such thing as absolute accuracy; what is called accuracy in each business is that amount of inaccuracy which is insignificant. If we want to understand what kind of precision the ancients aimed at, our errors in examining their work must be so small as to be insignificant by the side of their errors. If they went to the nearest hundredth of an inch, we must go to the nearest thousandth, in order to know what their ideas of accuracy were.

The main work of the first season, therefore,

TRIANGULATION
OF PYRAMIDS, GIZEH
1: 1500

consisted in making a very precise triangulation all over the hill of Gizeh; including points around all the three pyramids, and on the temples and walls belonging to them. A fine theodolite was used, by which single seconds of angle could be read; and the observations were repeated so many times, that if I finished the work at a single station in one day I was well satisfied. The result of all this mass of checked observations, after duly reducing and computing, was that there was scarcely a point about which one quarter inch of uncertainty remained, and most of the points were fixed to within one-tenth of an inch. These points were, however, only arbitrary marks put on suitable spots of the rock; and it needed a good deal of less elaborate work to connect these with the traces of the ancient constructions near them. The second season I obtained permission from Prof. Maspero to search for the ancient casing and points of construction of the pyramids. Many points were found easily enough; but some required long and dangerous work. To reach the casing, which still remains at the middle of each side of the great pyramid, was a hard matter; it was heaped over with broken chips a dozen to twenty feet deep, and they lay so loosely that they soon fell into any hole that we dug. It was needful therefore to begin with a very wide space, and gradually taper the hole, walling the sides roughly with loose blocks. Thus we succeeded in finding the casing on each of the three sides, where it was as yet unknown; the north casing having been cleared by a huge excavation of Col. Vyse over forty years before. These holes were very ticklish places, make them as we would; the Arabs dared not work them, and I had to get negroes to face the business. As it was, we could not venture to knock a bit of the stone, for fear of the vibration loosening the sides; and I was all but buried once, when—just as I had come out of the bottom of the hole—many tons of stones went pouring down the pit from the loose stuff above.

At the third pyramid the difficulty was varied; there the pyramid was encumbered with loose blocks lying on a bed of sand. So soon then as we dug into the sand, the blocks came sliding down into our hole. But here the matter was settled by adding more stones, and so wedging all the blocks around into a ring; thus they balanced around the hole, and kept each other out.

The casing of the third pyramid has never been finished.

4. Granite Casing Third Pyramid.

The outer sides of the granite blocks were left with an excess of stone, in order to protect them in transport from Assuan, and this was never removed by dressing down, as had been intended. Thus in some examples—as above—the stone sticks out far beyond where the face was to be. In the granite temple the same method was followed, but there the wall was dressed, and hence each stone at the corners of the chambers turns a little way round the adjacent walls, so that the corner is cut out of solid stone all the way up.

The temple of the third pyramid is the most complete, and gives the best notion of the enclosures around the cell or chamber, in which the offerings to the deceased king were presented. This view is from the top of the pyramid, looking down into it. At the end of its causeway are a few trees, and a hill on the right, with remains of another causeway leading from it to the plain.

5. Temple of Third Pyramid.

Of the inside of the pyramids there were already numerous measurements recorded, which showed that small differences and errors existed in the work; but some fresh and more accurate methods of examination were needed. Instead then of simply measuring from wall to wall, and remaining in ignorance of where the discrepancies lay, I always used plumb-lines for measuring all upright faces, and a levelling instrument for all horizontal surfaces. By hanging a plumb-line in each corner of a room, and measuring from it to the walls at many parts of the height, and then observing the distances of the plumb-lines on the floor, it is easy to find the dimensions of the room at any level, and to know exactly where the faults of construction lie. The same principle gives us the readiest way of examining a solid, such as a sarcophagus; and we can thus, in a few hours, do more than in as many days’ work with elaborate apparatus. Some thread, and a piece of wax to stick it on with, are all that is needed beside the plain measuring rods.

The results of thus attacking the subject were, that on the one hand most brilliant workmanship was disclosed, while on the other hand it was intermingled with some astonishing carelessness and clumsiness. The laying out of the base of the great pyramid of Khufu is a triumph of skill; its errors, both in length and in angles, could be covered by placing one’s thumb on them; and to lay out a square of more than a furlong in the side (and with rock in the midst of it, which prevented any diagonal checks being measured) with such accuracy shows surprising care. The work of the casing stones which remain is of the same class; the faces are so straight and so truly square, that when the stones were built together the film of mortar left between them is on an average not thicker than one’s thumb nail, though the joint is a couple of yards long; and the levelling of them over long distances has not any larger errors. In the inside of the pyramid the same fine work is seen: the entrance passage joints are in many cases barely visible when searched for; in the Queen’s chamber, when the encrusting salt is scraped away, the joints are found with cement not thicker than a sheet of paper; while in the King’s chamber the granite courses have been dressed to a fine equality, not varying more than a straw’s breadth in a furlong length of blocks.

6. Casing beneath Rubbish North of Pyramid. Arab Hole above it.

Side by side with this splendid work are the strangest mistakes. After having levelled the casing so finely, the builders made a hundred times the error in levelling the shorter length of the King’s chamber, so that they might have done it far better by just looking at the horizon. After having dressed the casing joints so beautifully, they left the face of the wall in the grand gallery rough chiselled. The design was changed, and a rough shaft was cut from the side of the gallery, down through the building and the rock, to the lower end of the entrance passage. The granite in the ante-chamber is left without its final dressing. And the kernel of the whole, the sarcophagus, has much worse work in it than in the building, or than in other sarcophagi of the same period. The meaning of this curious discrepancy seems to be that the original architect, a true master of accuracy and fine methods, must have ceased to superintend the work when it was but half done. His personal influence gone, the training of his school was not sufficient to carry out the remainder of the building in the first style. Thus the base and the casing around it, the building of the Queen’s chamber, and the preparation of the granite for the King’s chamber, must all have had the master’s eye; but the carelessness of the pupils appears so soon as the control was removed. Mere haste will not account for egregious mistakes, such as that of the King’s chamber level, which the skilful architect would have remedied by five minutes’ observation. This suggests that the exquisite workmanship often found in the early periods, did not so much depend on a large school or widespread ability, as on a few men far above their fellows, whose every touch was a triumph. In this way we can reconcile it with the crude, and often clumsy, work in building and sculpture found in the same ages. There were no trades union rules against ‘besting one’s mates’ in those days, any more than in any business at present where real excellence is wanted.

The results were decidedly destructive for the theories. The fundamental length of the base of the pyramid does not agree to any of the theoretical needs: and though no doubt some comfort has been extracted from hypothetical lengths of what the pyramid base would be if continued down to levels below the pavement (such as the different sockets), yet no such bases ever existed, nor could even be guessed at or theorised on, so long as the pyramid base was intact, as the sockets were entirely covered by casing and pavement. Various other theories fare as badly; and the only important one which is well established is that the angle of the outside was such as to make the base circuit equal to a circle struck by the height as a radius. See also the account of Medum.

The second pyramid was built by Khafra. His name was first found with it on the piece of a mace-head of white stone, which I found in the temple. The form is here completed from another head of the twelfth dynasty; and drawings of maces from Medum show the head and stick entire. In accuracy Khafra’s work is inferior to that of Khufu. The errors of the pyramid length are double, and of angle quadruple that found in the earlier work, and the bulk of its masonry is far rougher. But the sarcophagus in it is of much better work, without any mistakes, and generally showing more experience and ability. The third pyramid, of Menkaura, is again inferior to the second, in both its outer form and internal work. It has moreover been most curiously altered; originally intended to be of small size, it has been greatly enlarged, not by repeated coatings, but at one operation. The original entrance passage was abandoned, and the chamber was deepened, another passage cut from the inside outwards so as to emerge lower down, and another chamber excavated below the level of the first, and lined with granite.

7. Mace-head of Khafra.

Some very usual fallacies with regard to the

8. Pyramid Doors.

9. Pivot Hole of Door and Cutting of Roof; South Pyrmaid, Dahshur.

pyramids were also disposed of. The passages are commonly supposed to have been blocked up by plugs of stone; whereas in both the great and second pyramids there is proof in the passages that no such blocks ever existed. The entrances are supposed to have been concealed by the solid masonry; whereas at Dahshur, and in Strabo’s account of the great pyramid, it is evident that a flap-door of stone filled the passage mouth, and allowed of its being passed. The pyramids are supposed to have been built by continuous additions during a king’s life, and ended only by his death; whereas there is no evidence of this in any of them, and it is clearly disproved by the construction and arrangement of the interiors; the plan was entire originally, and the whole structure begun at once. The sarcophagi are often supposed to have been put in to the pyramids at the king’s burial, with his body inside; whereas in the great and second pyramids they will not pass through the passages, and must have been built in. The casing is supposed to have been all built in the rough, and cut to its slope afterwards; whereas the remaining blocks at the base slightly differ in angle side by side, proving that they were dressed before building in.

Besides examining the pyramids, the remains of the temple of the great pyramid were cleared, and the granite temple of Khafra was thoroughly measured and planned. But perhaps the most interesting part of the subject was tracing how the work was done. The great barracks of the workmen were found, behind the second pyramid, capable of housing four thousand men; and such was probably the size of the trained staff of skilled masons employed on the pyramid building. Besides these a large body of mere labourers were needed to move the stones; and this was probably done during the inundation, when water carriage is easier, and the people have no work. Herodotos gives the echo of this, when he says that the relays of labourers only worked for three months at a time. It would be quite practicable to build the great pyramid in the time, and with the staff of labourers assigned by Herodotos.

Tools are needed as well as labour; and the question of what tools were used is now settled by evidence, to which modern engineers cordially agree. I found repeatedly that the hard stones, basalt, granite, and diorite, were sawn; and that the saw was not a blade, or wire, used with a hard powder, but was set with fixed cutting points, in fact, a jewelled saw. These saws must have been as much as nine feet in length, as the cuts run lengthwise on the sarcophagi. One of

13. Graving in Diorite.

14. Section of Bowl turned with Radius Tool.

the most usual tools was the tubular drill, and this was also set with fixed cutting points; I have a core from inside a drill hole, broken away in the working, which shows the spiral grooves produced by the cutting points as they sunk down into the material; this is of red granite, and there has been no flinching or jumping of the tool; every crystal, quartz, or felspar, has been cut through in the most equable way, with a clean irresistible cut. An engineer, who knows such work with diamond drills as well as any one, said to me, ‘I should be proud to turn out such a finely cut core now;’ and truth to tell, modern drill cores cannot hold a candle to the Egyptians; by the side of the ancient work they look wretchedly scraped out and irregular. That such hard cutting points were known and used is proved by clean cut fine hieroglyphs on diorite, engraved without a trace of scraping; and by the lathe work, of which I found pieces of turned bowls with the tool lines on them, and positive proof that the surface had not been ground out. The lathe tools were fixed as in modern times, to sweep regular arcs from a centre; and the work is fearless and powerful, as in a flat diorite table with foot, turned in one piece; and also surpassingly delicate, as in a bowl of diorite, which around the body is only as thick as stout card. The great granite sarcophagi were sawn outside, and hollowed by cutting rows of tube drill holes, as may be seen in the great pyramid. No doubt much hammer-dressing was also used, as in all periods; but the fine work shows the marks of just such tools as we have only now re-invented. We can thus understand, far more than before, how the marvellous works of the Egyptians were executed; and further insight only shows plainer the true skill and ability of which they were masters in the earliest times that we can trace.

15. Plummet of Khufu. 1: 2.

16. Gizeh Pyramids from the Desert.

17. Temple of Tanis from East End; Pylon in distance.

CHAPTER II.
TANIS.
1884.

After a year in England, for the working out and publication of the survey at the pyramids, described in the last chapter, I undertook to excavate for the Egypt Exploration Fund. And as great things were then expected from Tanis, and a special fund of £1000 was in course of being raised for its clearance, the most desirable course was to ascertain what prospects really existed there. A preliminary exploring trip was made to several places in the Delta, in course of which I discovered Naukratis; and as soon as the marshes had somewhat dried I went in February to Tanis. It is an out-of-the-way place, inaccessible except by water during some months, twenty miles from a post or station; on three sides the marshy plains stretch away to the horizon, only a little cultivation existing on the south. When I arrived the mounds were almost impassable for the mud, and continual storms threatened my tent. But gradually I built a house on the top of the mounds, and from thence looked down over the work on one side, and over the village on the other.

Tanis is a great ring of mounds, around the wide plain in which lie the temple ruins. And the first day I went over it I saw that the temple site was worked out; the limits of the ruins had been reached, and no more statues or buildings should be hoped for, by the side of what was already known. But such were the large expectations about the site, that I had to prove the case, by a great amount of fruitless trenching in all directions. The only monuments that we unearthed were far out of the temple, in a Ptolemaic shrine; this contained a fine stele of Ptolemy II and Arsinoe, which was entirely gilt when discovered, and two or three other steles, the recess containing the large stele being flanked by two sphinxes. The main stele and sphinxes are now in the British Museum.

But though digging was not productive in the temple, yet I found two important monuments which had been exposed by Mariette’s excavators, and yet were never noticed by himself, De Rougé, or others who studied the remains. One was a part of an obelisk of the thirteenth dynasty, with an inscription of a king’s son, Nehesi, perhaps the son of the king Nehesi-Ra. The other was the upper part of the well-known stele of Tirhaka: this I found lying face up; and on searching every block of the same quality for the remainder of it, I turned up the lower half, which Mariette had hidden; thus the unknown led me to the known.

18. Stele of Ptolemy II.

There was, however, plenty of work to do in examining thoroughly, and planning, all the remains, which—as we have just noticed—were but scantily attended to before. The fallen blocks of the granite pylon needed to be turned over, as they were all cut out of older sculptures; and to do this without tackle, I dug a trench on one side of the heap of blocks, and then rolled them over one by one into it, so as to turn them. In this way I examined every block, and discovered the fragments of the enormous colossus of Ramessu II in red granite, which must have been about 80 feet high, and have towered far above the temple roofs, amid the forest of obelisks which adorned the city. The toe alone is as large as a man’s body. Some large statues were also found by the road leading up to the temple. And every block of the hundreds which strew the ground here was examined on all sides, by mining beneath it where needful; every fragment of inscription was copied; and finally a plan was made, showing the place of each block, with numbers affixed referring to the inscriptions. Thus any one can draw their own conclusions as to the arrangement of the place, and the positions of the monuments, better in their arm-chair than by wandering over the chaos of dilapidation in the plain of Zoan.

Finding that no great discoveries could reward me in the temple, I tried the outskirts of the town, but only found a very late cemetery of no importance. I tried also sinking pits, in hopes of reaching the early town of the Ramessides or the Hyksos; but in vain, as the accumulation of Greek and Roman remains blocked the way, after descending even thirty feet. Then the houses of the Roman period on the surface were examined. One yielded a jar in the corner of the cellar, in which the lady had hidden away a large silver chain, a necklace of fine stones, and a gold ring.

19. Gold Ring. 1: 2.

But the burnt houses were the real prize of the season, as the owners had fled and left most of their goods; and the reddened patches of earth attracted us usually to a profitable site. In one house there was a beautiful marble term, of Italian work; and the fragments of a very curious zodiac, painted on a sheet of clear glass over a foot square, each sign or month having an emblematic head to represent it; unhappily, it was broken in a hundred and fifty pieces, and as I uncovered them it was cruel to see the gold foil work which was on them peel off on to the earth, leaving the glass bare in many parts. A yet more heartrending sight was the pile of papyrus rolls, so rotted that they fell to pieces with a touch, showing here and there a letter of the finest Greek writing. The next house, also burnt, was the best of all. Here we found the limestone statuette of the owner, Bakakhuiu, inscribed in demotic on the base; a sensible, sturdy-looking, active man, who seems to have been a lawyer or notary, to judge by his documents. Many household objects of pottery and stone were found, jars, mortars, &c., and a beautiful blue-glazed jar, perhaps the largest such known, and quite perfect. The rich result, however, was in his waste; for in a recess under the cellar stairs had been five baskets of

20. Bakakhuiu.

old papyri. Though many had utterly perished by being burnt to white ash, yet one basketful was only carbonized; and tenderly undermining the precious black mass, I shifted it out and carried it up to my house with fear and reverent joy. It took ten hours’ work to separate safely all the documents, twisted, crushed, and squeezed together, and all as brittle as only burnt papyrus is; a bend, or a jerk, and the piece was ruined. At last, I had over a hundred and fifty documents separated; and, each wrapped apart, and put in tin boxes, they travelled safely. They have now all been opened, and glazed; and two of them already prove to be of the greatest interest. One is a book of hieroglyphic signs in columns, followed by their hieratic equivalents, and the school-name by which they were learned: the greater part of this is preserved, and shows us, for the first time, the system on which the hieroglyphics were arranged and taught.

21. Hieroglyphics, with Hieratic Form and Explanation.

The other is a geographical papyrus, forestalling Brugsch’s great work on the geography and the nome divisions of Egypt; though defective in part all through, it is of the greatest value. Most of the other papyri are in demotic, and still await reading, while some are in Greek. Of course, being carbonized, the whole mass is black, and it is only by reflected light that it is possible to read anything; when the illumination is properly arranged, the duller surface of the ink can be seen on the brighter face of the papyrus. It is seldom such a treasure as this basketful of knowledge is so narrowly saved from destruction; a little more air in the burning, a little less care in the unearthing, the separation, the packing, or the opening, and these documents would have disappeared. Of course, under the usual system of leaving Arab overseers to manage excavations, all such discoveries are utterly destroyed.

22. Ruins of Fort, with Arab Cemetery.

CHAPTER III.
NAUKRATIS.
1885.

Before beginning work in the end of 1883 I visited Gizeh; and, as usual, many small antiquities were offered to me by the Arabs. Among such was the upper part of an alabaster figure of a soldier, wearing a helmet and armlets, which was plainly of archaic Greek or Cypriote work. I at once gave the man what he asked for it (never run risks in important cases), and then enquired where he got it. ‘From Nebireh,’ was his answer, and that was somewhere near Damanhur. So, a month or two later, I took an opportunity of going down to that region, and, after some mistakes and enquiries, I at last reached the place, in course of a twenty mile walk, and having only half-an-hour to spare before going on to the train. There I met a sight which I had never hoped for,—almost too strange to believe. Before me lay a long low mound of town ruins, of which all the core had been dug out by the natives for earth, thus baring the very lowest level of the town all over the middle of it. Wherever I walked in this crater I trod on pieces of archaic Greek pottery; soon I laded my pockets with scraps of vases and of statuettes, and at last tore myself away, longing to resolve the mystery of these Greeks in Egypt. Up to that time no Greek remains earlier than the Ptolemaic age, and Alexander, had been found in the country, and to step back two or three centuries, into the days of black-figured and rosette-ornamented vases, and archaic statuettes, was quite a new departure.

23. Cypriote Soldier.

24. Dedication of Statue to Heliodoros, by the Naukratites. 1: 6.

That season’s work was already laid out, and I was bound to go to Tanis; but the next season I returned to this curious site, determined to understand its history. The only place that I could find to live in about there was an old country house of a pasha; and, while looking at it, I noticed two blocks of dark grey stone by the side of the entrance. Turning one of them over, I there saw the glorious heading ΗΠΟΛΙΣΗΝΑΥΚΡΑΤΙ ...; a decree of the city of Naukratis was before me, and the unknown town now had a name; and that a name which had been sought for often, and far from this place, and which was one of the objects of Egyptian research to discover and truly assign. All that day ‘Naukratis’ rang in my mind, and I sprang over the mounds with that splendid exultation of a new discovery, long wished for and well found. In England, some hesitated, and some doubted, but none denied it; and after the season’s work there was no longer any question. The next year I continued the excavations along with Mr. Ernest Gardner, and was soon able to leave the remainder of the clearing in his hands, while I moved on to fresh discoveries, on the east of the country.

The origin of Naukratis was evidently entirely Greek; down on the flat surface of Nile mud, which shows the level of the country when the city was founded, the earliest remains are Greek potsherds. The date of its foundation was certainly before Amasis; and the discovery of the fort of Defenneh (Tahpanhes) the next year explained the origin of this city. When Psamtik I, in 665 B.C., had wrested the throne of Egypt from the dodecarchy, or local princes (who had assumed authority on the fall of the Ethiopian rule of Tirhaka), he based his power on ‘the brazen men from the sea,’ the Karian and Ionian mercenaries. But he knew too well the temper of his countrymen to obtrude this strength needlessly; and at the same time he needed special defence from Libya and from Asia. He therefore planted his Greek troops in two great garrisons, one on his Libyan frontier at Naukratis, the other on his Asiatic frontier at Tahpanhes; at each place founding a large square fort and a walled camp around it.

These Greeks brought with them their national worship; and of the temples mentioned by Herodotos, those of Apollo, Aphrodite, and Hera, have been found, and also one to the Dioskouroi, not recorded in history. The temple of the Milesian Apollo appears to have been the oldest: it stood in the centre of the town, outside of the fort, and was first built of mud-brick, plastered over, and later on—about the fifth century—of

25. Necking of Column, Apollo Temple.

white stone, some pieces of which I found. The site had been nearly cleared out by the native diggers; and I only came in time to get fragments of the temple, and to open up the great rubbish trench, where all the temple refuse was thrown. Very precious this rubbish was to me, layer under layer of broken vases, from the innumerable small bowls to the great craters of noble size and design; and most precious of all were the hundreds of dedications inscribed on the pottery, some of them probably the oldest examples of Greek writing known, and altogether far outnumbering all our past material for the

26. Oldest Ionic Dedication, 660? B.C. 2: 5.

27. Naukratite Cup. 1: 3.

archaic alphabets. The temple of Aphrodite I found the next year, and Mr. Gardner cleared it out, and unearthed three successive buildings, one over the other. Though, perhaps, as old as that of Apollo, its inscriptions are not so primitive; but it has a charm from the tale of Athenaios about the mariners from Cyprus, who had a statuette of the goddess a span high in their boat; and how they besought it in the storm, and were soon at peace, and their boat bespread with myrtle boughs; wherefore they dedicated the statuette in the temple of Aphrodite at Naukratis, and the people of the city made myrtle wreaths for many an age after. Fine vases were found here; and great quantities of a particular kind of cup, which was apparently made on purpose for offering here. It is a bowl with a very tall upright brim, deeper than the bowl itself, and covered over with a white coat, on which delicate painting in brown is sometimes added; that these were specially made here we know from the name of Aphrodite being painted on one before the baking. The temple of Hera has been entirely swept away, and we only know of its place from some pieces of dedication on bowls found by Mr. Gardner; these lay not far from the Apollo temple, in a great enclosure, which I planned the first season. The Dioskouroi had a small temple near that of Apollo; of which only some brick pillars, and flakes of brilliant red and blue stucco, were found. But several pieces of dedicated bowls showed the nature and early age of this shrine.

28. Examples of Dedications (transliterated) to Apollo, Aphrodite, Hera, and the Dioskouroi. 2: 3.

The greatest and most celebrated building of Naukratis was the Panhellenion, with the central altar of the Greek community in Egypt. This was in the large enclosure around the fort, as all are agreed; but the depth of earth there prevented my reaching any remains of the altar. Herodotos expressly mentions that certain Greek towns were excluded from the

29. Foundation Deposit Models. Iron: 1, Hoe; 7, Mortar Rake. 2, Alabaster Peg. Bronze: 3, Knife; 5, Axe; 8, Adze; 9, Trowel; 11, Chisel; 12, Hatchet. Glazed: 4, Cup; 10, Libation Vase; 14, Block. 6, Name of Ptolemy II on Lazuli. Materials: 13, Mud-brick; 15-23, Turquoise, Jasper, Lazuli, Agate-Gold, Silver, Lead, Copper, Iron. 1: 4

common participation in the Panhellenion, and that hence arose the separate temples in the town. Now as the sanctuary and the fort were in one, it seems readily explained how the mercenaries welcomed their kinsmen and townsfolk in the camp to join at the common altar; while those traders who came from other cities would be left outside, and would found their own temples. If it were so, we may conclude that neither Miletos, Samos, nor Aegina, furnished any of the mercenaries of Psamtik. In the time of Ptolemy Philadelphos, as the old camp and Panhellenion no longer needed defence, the entrance was widened and occupied with a large building; of which the foundation deposits, consisting of models of the iron and bronze tools, of the materials, and of the libation vases, were discovered in each corner of the bed of sand which was laid beneath the foundations. An avenue led up to this from the west, and marble rams, a large granite sphinx, and a base of a figure dedicated to Zeus of Thebes (i.e. Amen, identified with Zeus), were found here.

30. Dedication of Palaistra. 1: 6.

To turn now to the town; probably one of the most important buildings in the fifth century B.C. was the palaistra, dedicated to Apollo by Kleainetos, Aristothemios, and Maiandrios, according to the beautiful marble inscription found here. Unfortunately we do not know the site of it, as the inscribed block had been re-used in later times, and was also dug up before I went to the place. It was shown to me one night in a native hut, by a glimmering lamp; I instantly copied it, for fear of any difficulty arising, and then laid down ten francs on it, and told the owner to take which he pleased, the stone or the money; with a little hesitation at having the pleasure of haggling so cut short, he picked up the unexpected price, and I walked off behind the precious block to my house. The natives had so cleared out the earth from the heart of the town that all the Roman, Ptolemaic, and Persian houses and remains were gone; and the floor of the crater thus dug out consisted of the oldest

31. Scarab Mould and Scarab. 1: 1.

32. Coin of Naukratis. 1: 1

town, underlaid by a bed of ashes, which apparently showed that the first settlement outside of the camp was a cluster of mere booths. Here I found a scarab factory, where they had made the scarabs of white and blue paste, so well known in Greek cemeteries in Rhodes and elsewhere. Hundreds of earthenware moulds and many scarabs were unearthed, and this factory is the leading point for dating the early town. The work of the scarabs is manifestly a Greek imitation of Egyptian style; and the names of the kings upon them show the dates to come down to the time of Uah-ab-ra (Apries), but not a single example of Amasis was found, proving the factory to have been extinct before his time. Probably the great defeat of the Greek troops by Amasis was a severe blow to Greek work for the time; although Naukratis reaped the benefit of the annihilation of the other Greek centres (such as Defenneh), by being tolerated and having the exclusive privilege of trade. The first autonomous coin of Naukratis yet known was found in the town; with heads of Naukratis and of the hero Alexander.

33. Iron Tools. 1, Sickle; 2, 3, Chisels; 4, Axe; 5, 6, Chisels; 7, Axe; 8, Fish-hook; 9, Arrow-head; 10, Hammer. 1: 8.

The old town had been so laid bare by the native diggers, that it was possible to form a tolerable plan of the streets and houses. The street lines were distinguished by the rubbish thrown out, mostly remains of food, shells, and bones; while in later times, from the fifth century, the streets were regularly mended with limestone chips and dust; and often one may trace the section of a puddle hole filled up with chips and levelled. Among the houses many fine pieces of vases were found, and a small hoard of early Greek silver coins and lumps of silver. But the most interesting matter was the history of tools, shown by the variety of iron tools; we here meet, for the first time, what may be looked on as practically our modern forms of chisels, &c.; and we see what a debt we owe to European invention, when we compare these with the bronze tools of the Egyptians which preceded them.

The cemetery has not yet been entirely found; a portion of it, mainly of the Alexandrine age, was cleared by Mr. Gardner, on a low mound to the north of the town, alongside of the canal; but it was not rich, and the principal objects were the Medusa heads, moulded in terra cotta, which were affixed to the wooden coffins. Probably the greater part of it is beneath the modern village.

The potteries of Naukratis were famous in the time of Athenaios, and long before that also, as we see by the great heaps of burnt earth and potters’ waste, and by the distinctive style of much of the early pottery. On comparing the characteristic styles of this place with those of Defenneh, also inhabited by Greeks of the same period, it is plain that most of the vases found were made here by a local school of potters. And though the clay is apparently of Greek origin, yet it would be immeasurably easier to import a ton of clay as ballast in a boat, than to move about a thousand brittle and bulky vases.

We will now sum up the results of this discovery, in its general connection with other antiquities. The site now found fills a gap in Egyptian geography; and it shows us how the Greeks were posted near the capital of that age,—Sais, but toward the Libyan frontier, where defence was needed; moreover they dwelt on a canal, which could be used by Greek traders at all seasons of the year, and which kept them apart from the Egyptians on the Nile. The plan of the town shows the fort, which became the

34. Negro on Naukratite Vase.

35. Naukratite Design. 1: 4.

Panhellenion, with a settlement extending along the bank of the canal for half a mile below it; amidst which stood the temples of the separate external colonies of traders, Milesian, Samian, and Aeginetan. The dedications found on the vases have been much discussed; but, viewed in the light of the history of the town, they are generally agreed now to be probably the earliest Ionic writing yet known. The styles of the vases made here are now fixed, and those found in other places which were exported from here can be identified; similarly we now know the source of the paste scarabs of mock-Egyptian design, often found in Greek tombs. The history of vase-painting is assisted by the successive periods of the layers of the Apollo remains, which extend over what was a doubtful age; and the history of tools and of Greek manufactures has been much extended. On almost every side this fresh view of the early sojourn of the Greeks in Egypt has consolidated and enlarged our knowledge; and given for the first time an actual insight into three centuries most important in their bearing on Greek development, and for which we were entirely dependent hitherto on literature and tradition.

36. Part of Embossed Gold Band. About 70 A.D. 1: 2.

37. Ruins of Daphnae, in the Desert.

CHAPTER IV.
DAPHNAE—TAHPANHES.
1886.

When I was exploring in the marshy desert about Tanis, I saw from the top of a mound—Tell Ginn—a shimmering grey swell on the horizon through the haze; and that I was told was Tell Defenneh, or rather Def’neh, as it is called. It was generally supposed to be the Pelusiac Daphnae of Herodotos, and the Tahpanhes of the Old Testament; but nothing definite was known about it, and as it lies in the midst of the desert, between the Delta and the Suez Canal, twelve miles from either, it was not very accessible. After working at Tell Nebesheh for some time, I left it in Mr. Griffith’s hands, and told my men that I wanted to work at Defneh; immediately I had more volunteers than I could employ, and I went into the desert to the work with a party of forty,—men, boys and girls,—and formed a settlement which enlarged up to seventy. We pitched on the old Pelusiac branch, which is now rather brackish, and it was sometimes difficult to drink the water: the people, however, made the best of it, and I never had a pleasanter time with my men than the two months I lived there, independent of all the local authorities which are generally met with. No one was allowed about the camp except the workers, and I never had the least trouble with them, nor heard a single squabble.

On reaching the place I found a wide flat plain bordering on the river, strewn all over with pottery, and with a mound of mud-brick building in the midst of it. I asked the name of the mound, and was told Kasr Bint el Yehudi, ‘the palace of the Jew’s daughter.’ This at once brought Tahpanhes to my mind. Can there be any tradition here? I thought. I turned to Jeremiah, and there read how he came, with Johanan, the son of Kareah, and all the officers, and the king’s daughters, down to Tahpanhes and dwelt there. We can hardly believe that the only place in Egypt where a celebrated daughter of a Jewish king lived, was called in later times ‘the palace of the Jew’s daughter’ by accident, especially as such a name is only known here. Rather has this unique name clung to the place, as so many names have lasted, as long or longer, in Egypt and Syria. The next question was, if any reason could be found for its possessing a Greek name, Daphnae. Soon this was settled by finding an abundance of Greek pottery of the archaic period; and so many Greek remains, and so little Egyptian, that it was evident a Greek camp had been here. This then was the camp of the Ionians described by Herodotos as having been founded by Psametichos I on the Pelusiac branch; and on reaching down to the foundation of the fort, I there took out the tablets with the name of Psamtik I as the founder. But Herodotos relates a tale about Sesostris having been attacked here by treachery, suggesting that buildings had existed here in Ramesside times; and beneath some work of Psamtik I found part of a wall of baked bricks, such as were used in tombs at Tell Nebesheh, not far from this, and only in Ramesside times. Literature and discovery therefore go hand in hand here remarkably closely.

38. Restoration of the Fort, showing the Large Platform before the Entry.

This place then appears to have been an old fort on the Syrian frontier guarding the road out of Egypt; and here Psamtik settled part of his ‘brazen men from the sea,’ and built a great fortress and camp, the twin establishment to that of the rest of the Greek mercenaries at Naukratis, on the Libyan side. The fort was a square mass of brickwork, with deep domed chambers or cells in it, which were opened from the top; this sustained the actual dwellings at about forty feet above the plain, so that a clear view of the distant

39. Foundation Deposit. 1: 2.

towns and the desert could be seen over the camp wall, to some ten or twenty miles. The camp was defended by a wall forty feet thick, and probably as high; but this is now completely swept away down to the ground by the winds and rains. Beneath each corner of the fort was placed a set of plaques of various materials, both metals and stones, with the name of Psamtik, and at the south-west corner were also the bones of a sacrifice and other ceremonial deposits. This fort was enlarged by chambers added to it during a couple of generations later; and it must have been over that threshold which still lies in the doorway that the Jewish fugitives entered, when Hophra gave them an asylum from the Assyrian scourge. We cannot doubt that Tahpanhes—the first place on the road into Egypt—was a constant refuge for the Jews during the series of Assyrian invasions; especially as they met here, not the exclusive Egyptians, but a mixed foreign population, mostly Greeks. Here then was a ready source for the introduction of Greek words and names into Hebrew, long before the Alexandrine age; and even before the fall of Jerusalem the Greek names of musical instruments, and other words, may have been heard in the courts of Solomon’s temple.

Another remarkable connection with the account given by Jeremiah was found on clearing around the fort. The entrance was in the side of a block of building projecting from the fort; and in front of it, on the opposite side of its roadway, similarly projecting from the fort, was a large platform or pavement of brickwork (see [fig. 38]), suitable for out-door business, such as loading goods, pitching tents, &c.,—just what is now called a mastaba. Now Jeremiah writes of ‘the pavement (or brickwork) which is at the entry of Pharaoh’s house in Tahpanhes’ (chap. xliii. 9, R.V.); this passage, which has been an unexplained stumbling-block to translators hitherto, is the exact description of the mastaba which I found; and this would be the most likely place for Nebuchadrezzar to pitch his royal tent, as stated by Jeremiah.

The Greek vases found here show us an entirely new type, derived from the form of the Egyptian metal vases, but with the pointed base replaced by a circular foot. The painting and style of these vases are also unknown elsewhere, and were never found at Naukratis, so that it is certain that they were made by Daphniote potters. Several other styles of vases are found here, but it is very remarkable to note the total difference from the pottery of Naukratis. If the vases had been mainly imported to these settlements in Egypt, we should certainly find the remains much alike in two towns both occupied by Ionians at the same period, and probably trading with the same places; whereas every style that is most common at either of these towns is almost or entirely unknown at the other town. Such a widespread distinction shows how largely the pottery was made by local schools of potters, at the place where we find it, and how little of it was carried by trade.

40. Greek Vase, imitated from form of Egyptian Metal Vase.

The decoration of some of the vases is surprising, as showing at what an early date some patterns were used. On one vase are two bands of design, one of the archaic square volute, and the other of the lotus or ‘palmetto’ pattern, which would otherwise have been supposed to be a century later.

41. Vase with different Patterns.

The greater part of the vase fragments were found in two chambers of the out-buildings of the fort. These rooms had been standing unused by the Greeks, and served for rubbish holes, so that when we cleared them out every scrape of the earth brought up some painted fragments, and the lucky workmen who had these places filled basket after basket each day. The finest vase of all was found alone, in a passage on the north of the fort, and nearly every fragment

42. Great Vase; Subjects, Boreas and Typhon.

was secured, ninety-nine pieces in all; it had been very probably a present to the Egyptian governor, or possibly to the king on some visit there, as it had traces of an inscription in demotic written on it with ink.

43. Iron Tools. 1, Pick; 2, 3, Knives; 4, Axe; 5, 6, Chisels; 7, Coulter?; 8, 9, Horses’ Bits; 10, 11, Chisels; 12, Knife; 13, Fish Hook; 14, 15, Arrow-heads; 16, Rasp. 1: 12.

The ground of the camp also supplied us with a large number of things; for although it would hardly be worth while to dig over so many acres exhaustively, yet the ground had been so much denuded that the surface-dust was rich in small objects. I therefore had it scraped over, and found hundreds of arrow-heads of iron and bronze, iron scale armour, swords, &c. One curious find was turned up the last afternoon of the work; a large lot of cut-up lumps of silver, and a massive gold handle off a tray, with lotus ‘palmetto’ design; it had been violently wrenched off, and the question is where would a soldier have a chance of looting such valuable gold plate of Egyptian design? It seems not unlikely that it was part of the royal treasure of Apries, plundered on his overthrow by Amasis. Another unusual object was picked up by one of the workmen on the surface (see [Fig. 47], end of chapter); it appeared to be a little silver box with a sliding lid. The lid was slightly opened, and the feet of a gold figure showed inside it. As it could not be opened more without breaking it, I carefully cracked out one side, and took from it a most beautiful little statuette of Ra, hawk-headed, and then restored the case again. It had evidently been a shrine to wear on a necklace, as there was a loop at the back of the box.

44. Gold Handle.

Although all the stone buildings had been destroyed, and lines of chips alone remained to show the sandstone and limestone of their construction, yet the larger part of a great stele of sandstone still lies there, bearing a long hieroglyphic inscription. It is evident therefore that Egyptian interests were not neglected, and that there must have been both Egyptian and Greek living side by side, together with Phoenician and Jew. One curious class of Egyptian remains

45. Sealed Jar Neck, with name of Amasis.

has given us the dates of some parts of the building; for the plaster sealings of the wine jars bear the cartouches of the king, and they were most likely knocked off and thrown aside within a few years of being sealed. One room seemed to have belonged to the royal butler, for dozens of plaster sealings of Psamtik were found together there. A jar had been fraudulently opened by boring through the plaster, and the pottery stopper below it, and then stopping the hole with fresh plaster. The prudent butler had struck off the whole neck of the jar, so as to preserve the proofs of the theft entire. The particularity of the sealing is remarkable; first the pottery bung was tied down, and the string sealed on clay by six inspectors; then a plaster cap was put over all that, and marked with the royal cartouche in several places.

The ruin of all this community came suddenly. Apries trusted to the Greek mercenaries, and defied the old Egyptian party (if indeed he was king at all according to Egyptian law); and Amasis, who had married the royal princess (and who was therefore a legal ruler), took the national side, and ousted his brother-in-law. Civil war was the consequence, and the Greeks—though straining all their power—were completely crushed by Amasis. He then carried out the protective policy of Egypt, and depopulated Daphnae, and all other Greek settlements excepting Naukratis, which latter thus became the only treaty-port open to Greek merchants. Hence, as we can date the founding of Defenneh almost to a year, about 665 B.C., when Psamtik established his mercenary camps, so we can also date its fall to a year in 564 B.C. when Amasis struck down the Greek trade. And this just accords with what we find, as there is a sudden cessation of Greek pottery at a stage someway before the introduction of red figured ware, which took place about 490 B.C.

It appears likely that as Naukratis was the home of the scarab trade to Greece, so Daphnae was the home of the jewellery trade, and the source of the semi-Egyptian jewellery so often found in Greek tombs. Much evidence of the goldsmith’s work was discovered; pieces of gold ornaments, pieces partly wrought, globules and scraps of gold, and a profusion of minute weights, such as would only be of use for precious metals.

46. Daphniote Gold Work.

We see then that Daphnae is the complement of Naukratis: they were twin cities, and teach us even more by their contrasts than their resemblances. We again reach back, as at Naukratis, through the pre-Alexandrine period to the foundation of Greek power in Egypt. We again find the interaction of Greek and Egyptian civilization. We again see the rise of a local school of pottery, and have the great advantage of its being confined to just a century, of which we know the exact limits. On the Jewish side of the history the arrangement of ‘the king’s house in Tahpanhes’ exactly explains the narrative; the very name of the place echoes the sojourn of the fugitive heiresses of Judah; and a valuable light is thrown on the early contact of the Hebrew race with the language and thought of the Greeks with whom they here dwelt.

47. Silver Shrine, and Gold Figure of Ra.

48. Granite Shrine of Temple.

CHAPTER V.
NEBESHEH.
1886.

While living at Tanis I heard of a great stone, and a cemetery, some miles to the south of that place, and took an opportunity of visiting it. The site, Tell Nebesheh, is a very out-of-the-way spot; marshes and canals cut it off from the rest of the delta; and the only path to it from the cultivated region is across a wide wet plain, on the other side of which is a winding bank hidden among the reeds of the bogs, and only to be found by a native. After leaving Naukratis I went to this place, to try to clear up its history; and Mr. Griffith finished the work here, after I had moved on to fresh discoveries. The great stone was seen to be a monolith shrine, and therefore probably a temple lay around it. As I walked over the mounds, I saw that the tufts of reedy grass came to an end along a straight line, the other side of which was bare earth. This pointed out the line of the enclosing wall of the temple, which I soon tracked round on all sides. In the middle of one side the mound dipped down, and a few limestone chips lay about. Here I dug for the entrance pylon, and before long we found the lower stones of it left in position; on clearing it out a statue of Ramessu II, larger than life, was found, and fragments of its fellow; also a sphinx, likewise in black granite, which had been so often reappropriated by various kings, that the original maker could hardly be traced. Probably of the twelfth dynasty to begin with, it had received a long inscription around the base from an official (the importance of which we shall see presently), and later on six other claimants seized it in succession. Outside of the pylon there had been an approach, of which one ornament remained; this is an entirely fresh design, being a column without any capital, but supporting a large hawk overshadowing the king Merenptah, who kneels before it. The sides of the column are inscribed.

The ground all around the monolith shrine was dug over by us. Directly beneath the shrine the granite pavement and its substructure remains entire; but over the rest of the area only the bed of the foundation can be traced, all the stone having been removed. Near the place of the entrance lay the throne of a statue of Usertesen III, probably one of a pair by the door, and showing that a temple had existed as far back as the twelfth dynasty. The foundation deposits in the corners I had to get out from beneath the water; they were plaques of metals and stones, with the name of Aahmes Si-nit, and pottery, showing that the temple had been built in the twenty-sixth dynasty. Among the ruins was found part of the black granite statue of the goddess Uati, which had doubtless stood in the monolith shrine as the great image of the temple.

49. Foundation Deposit. 1: 2.

At the back of the shrine lay a black granite altar of Usertesen III, which, like the sphinx, had received an inscription by an official at a later time. These added inscriptions are of value, although they have been nearly effaced by subsequent kings; they show that in the dark times before the eighteenth dynasty (for by their rudeness they fall in that age), certain royal chancellors could venture to usurp the monuments of previous kings. This could hardly have been possible if the king of that period cared for the monuments; and we probably see in these chancellors the native viziers of the Hyksos kings, who were also apparently reckoned by the Egyptians as their rulers, and entered with ephemeral reigns of a year or two in the lists of the fourteenth dynasty. It was this vice-royalty that was conferred on Joseph, when the royal signet was given to him, and he had the honour of the second chariot.

But it was evident that some temple had existed here before Aahmes, as the monuments were of earlier ages; and on looking at the plan it is seen that his temple is not in the middle of the enclosure, nor is it in the line of the axis, but at right angles to it. I therefore searched for the first temple about the midst of the area, but for a long time nothing appeared besides chips. At last a mass of sand was found with a vertical face, and this I at once recognised as the sand bed laid in the earth, on which the walls of the temple had been founded. It was covered with about twelve feet of dust and chips, but by sinking pits at intervals it was traced all round the whole extent of the former temple. The foundation deposits were unattainable, as they were too deep beneath the water level, and the great sand bed collects the water so readily that it could not be kept down more than three feet by baling.

50. Sanctuary and Temples.

51. Lykaonian Spearheads and Vases.

The cemetery was the other object at this place. It proved to be of tolerable extent, about half a mile long; but the earliest tomb found was of Ramesside age. Most of the burials were of the twenty-sixth to the thirtieth dynasties, and the rarity of earlier interments was explained by the condition of those which remain. The tomb chambers were all subterranean, yet most of them were found roofless, though level with the ground; of some, only a few bricks remained at the sides; very few were still complete with a brick vault. In fact they were in every stage of removal, owing to the denudation of the sand ground in which they were placed. The inference is only too evident, that the earlier tombs have simply been denuded wholly away, below the last brick of the walls. Many of the chambers were excavated, but only in a few of them were any ushabti figures found. Some of them were sumptuous buildings of limestone; but mostly they were of the mud bricks, both in the walls and the arched roofing. The most interesting class were those of Lykaonian mercenaries; most likely from an outpost of the Daphnae camp, stationed here. In those tombs there were no ushabtis; the bodies lay north and south, instead of east and west, as in the Egyptian tombs; there were bronze and sometimes iron spear-heads, and curious forked spear-heads, like that on a funeral stele at Iconium; and moreover, Cypriote pottery, generally pilgrim bottles.

While working in the cemetery we found one unrifled tomb, containing four mummies, with their sets of amulets intact. These I carefully took off the bodies, noting the position of every object, so that I could afterwards rearrange them in their original order exactly as found. But the greatest discovery here in point of size was a great tomb formed by a brick-walled yard or enclosure sunk in the ground. Within this were two limestone sarcophagi inscribed, and a splendid basalt sarcophagus, highly wrought, and with a long inscription; this was encased in a huge block of limestone for protection, and it required much work to break this away when Count D’Hulst removed it to London. These sarcophagi were for a family who held offices in the Egyptian town of Am; another sarcophagus found near these also named Am, and a piece of a statuette from the temple gave the same name. From these many different sources it appears that Am was the name of Tell Nebesheh; especially as Uati was the goddess of Am, and hers was the statue of the great shrine and temple here. This gives a fresh point in the geography of ancient Egypt, and explains what Herodotos means by the Arabian Buto, in contrast to the other Buto (or ‘Temple of Uati’) in the western half of the delta.

52. Ushabti Figures, Twentieth Dynasty. 1: 8.

53. A Nile Morning.

CHAPTER VI.
UP THE NILE.
1887.

When in the end of 1886 I went to Egypt, I had no excavations in prospect, having bid good-bye to the Fund; but I had promised to take photographs for the British Association, and I had much wished to see Upper Egypt in a more thorough way than during a hurried dahabiyeh trip to Thebes in 1882. To this end my friend Mr. Griffith joined me. We hired a small boat with a cabin at Minia, and took six weeks wandering up to Assuan, walking most of the way in and out of the line of cliffs. Thus we saw much that is outside of the usual course, and spent afterwards ten days at Assuan, and three weeks at Thebes, in tents. On coming down the Nile I walked along the eastern shore from Wasta to Memphis, but found it a fruitless region. Lastly, I lived several weeks at Dahshur, for surveying the pyramids there.

Assuan proved a most interesting district, teeming with early inscriptions cut on the rocks; and to copy all of these was a long affair. Every day we went out with rope-ladder, bucket, and squeeze-paper, as early as we could, and returned in the dusk; so at last some two hundred inscriptions were secured, many of which were of importance, and quite unnoticed before. These carvings are some of them notices of royal affairs, but mostly funereal lists of offerings for the benefit of various deceased persons. They abound most in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth dynasties, though some of them are later; and one records queen Amenardus, and another Psamtik II, of the twenty-sixth dynasty. Their main interest is in the great number of personal names which they preserve, and the relationships stated. We see that the father is often not named at all, and the father’s family is scarcely ever noticed; while on the mother’s side the relations extend even to second cousins. To decipher these records is sometimes a hard matter, when they are very rudely chipped—or rather bruised—on the rough granite rocks; and continually we used to consult and dispute about some sign for long enough to copy all the rest of the inscription. Some of them are, however, beautifully engraved, and quite monumental in style. The most striking, perhaps, is a rock on the island of Elephantine, which had never been noticed before, although in the pathway. It was a sort of royal album begun by Ra-kha-nefer (fifth dynasty); followed by Unas (fifth), who carved a handsome tablet. Then Ra-meri Pepi (sixth) appropriated Ra-kha-nefer’s inscription; Ra-nefer-ka Pepi next carved a tablet; in later times, of the eleventh dynasty, Antef-aa II followed with another tablet; and lastly Amenemhat I (twelfth dynasty) placed the sixth inscription here.

54. Tablets of Kings, Fifth to Twelfth Dynasties. 1: 40.

Not only were there these granite inscriptions to be copied, but also a great number of graffiti and travellers’ names on the sandstone rocks, principally at Gebel Silsileh. Among these was a Phoenician inscription, one of the very few known in Egypt; and some curious quarry records of Roman age. The main inscription of this region is, however, one very seldom seen, even by antiquaries as it is in a valley

55. An Inscribed Rock At Silsileh.

56. Tablet of Antef and Mentuhotep III.

where no one stops. It portrays Antef V and his vizier Khati worshipping Mentuhotep IV and his wife. Near it is another, smaller, tablet with the worship of the same king; and up the valley we discovered a tablet with the worship of Sankh-ka-ra, all of the eleventh dynasty. All over this district are many rude figures of animals, marked on the rocks by hammering: they are of various ages, some perhaps modern, but the earlier ones certainly before the eighteenth dynasty; and, to judge by the weathering of the rock, it seems probable that they were begun here long before any of the monuments of Egypt that we know. The usual figures are of men, horses, and boats, but there are also camels, ostriches and elephants to be seen.

57. Animal Figures at Silsileh.

On the desert hills behind Esneh I found what is—so far—the oldest thing known from Egypt. In prehistoric days the Nile used to fill the whole breadth of the valley, to a depth of a couple of hundred feet, fed with the heavy rainfall that carved back the valleys all along the river by great waterfalls, the precipices of which now stand stark and arid in the bleaching sun. Many parts of the valley are above the present river, and are now desert, so that at Esneh the hills are several miles from the Nile, and on a spur of one—where probably no man sets foot for

58. Oldest Tool in Egypt. 1:2.

59. People of Pun, S. Arabia.

centuries at a time—I found lying a palaeolithic wrought flint. It was about a couple of hundred feet above the Nile, and being clearly a river-worn object, it had been left there in the old time of the Great Nile. The flints found by General Pitt-Rivers at Thebes belong to a later age, when the Nile had fallen to almost its present level. But those are far older than any monuments known to us. We see then two stages before the beginning of what we can call history.

60. Hanebu, Early Greek.

At Thebes my main work was in obtaining casts and photographs of all the types of foreign races on the monuments. For making ethnographical comparisons we were, until then, dependent on drawings, which were often incorrect. Now we have nearly two hundred photographs, all with the same size of head, giving several examples of each race that was represented by the Egyptians.