1881 - 1891.
                                     
                             

                                        Roman Portraits found by Petrie at Hawara
                
        Exhibition at The Burrell, Glasgow   DIGGING  FOR DREAMS   March - September  2001 

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                                    CHAPTER 1    PYRAMIDS OF GIZEH  1881-1882                                        
                                                  
                  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 to those of any European country, and where many customary appliances were not to be obtained, required necessary 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 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 had 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 the past part of two years; and often when in draughty houses, or chilly tents, I have wished myself back in my tomb. No place is is 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.
          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. One of the most obvious of all facts was the actual size of the great pyramid; yet this was not known with any great accuracy. The main work of the first season, therefore, 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 many times. The result of all this mass of checked observations, 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.
          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 we dug.
           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 weighing all the blocks around into a ring; thus they balanced around the hole, and kept each other out. 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 represented.
          Of the inside of the pyramids there were already numerous measurements recorded, which showed that small differences 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.
            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. The work of the casing stones which remain is of the same class; the faces are so straight and so truly square. In the inside of the pyramid the same fine work is seen; the entrance passage joints are in so many cases barely visible when searched for.
             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 building in the first style.
                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. 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. 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.
                Besides examining the pyramids, the remains of the temple of the great pyramid was cleared and the granite temple of Khafra was thoroughly measured and planned. But perhaps the most interesting 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 4,000 men. Besides these a large body of mere labourers were needed to move stones; and this was probably done during the inundation, when water carriage was easier. and the people have no work. Tools were needed as well as labour, and 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. One of the most usual tools was the tubular drill. 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.The great granite sarcophagi were sawn outside, and hollowed by cutting rows of tube drills. No doubt much hammer dressing was also used , as in all periods. 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.                  

                                                     CHAPTER   11          TANIS  1884
                                                            
              After a year in England, for the working out and publication of the survey of 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 £1,000 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.    
              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 11 and Arisnoe, 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 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 Rouge, or others who studied the remains. One was part of an obelisk of the 13th dynasty, with an inscription of a king's son, Nehesi, perhaps the son of the king Neshi-Ra. The other was the upper part of the well known stele of Tirhaka : this was 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.
             There was, however, plenty of work to do in the examining thoroughly, and planning, all the remains, which were 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 in to it, so as to turn them. In this way I examined every block, and discovered the fragments of the enormous  colossus of Ramesses 11 in red granite. 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. 
            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 accumulationof Greek and Roman remains blocked the way. 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.
           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 into a hundred and fifty pieces. 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 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 etc. The rich result , however was in his waste; for in a recess under the cellar stairs had been five baskets of 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.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 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 hieroglyphics were arranged and taught. The other papyrus is a geographical papyrus; 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. It is seldom that such a treasure as this basketful of knowledge is so narrowly saved from destruction.  

                                               CHAPTER   111       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, 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 20 mile walk. 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 natives for earth, thus baring the 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 2 to 3centuries, into the days of black figured and rosette ornamented vases, and archaic statuettes, was quite a new departure.
            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 origin of Naukratis was evidently entirely Greek; down to the level of 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 the 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 1, in 665 B.C. had wrested the throne of Egypt from the dodecarchy, or local princes, he based his power on 'the brazen men of 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 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 town, outside of the fort, and was first built of mud-brick, plastered over, and later on, of white stone. 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. The temple of Aphrodite I found the next year and unearthed three successive buildings, one over the other. Though perhaps as old as that of Apollo, its inscriptions are not so primitive.
              The greatest and most celebrated building of Naukratis was the Panthellenion, 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. Herodotus expressly mentions that certain Greek towns were excluded from the common participation in the Panthellenion, and that hence rose 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 own temples.
             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 there. 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 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 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 by being tolerated and having exclusive privilege of trade. The first autonomous coin of Naukratis yet known was found in the town; with heads of Naukratis and of hero Alexander.
              The old town had been laid so 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 a variety of iron tools; here we meet, for the first time, what may be looked on as practically our modern form 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.
               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 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, viewed in the light of the history of the town, are generally agreed 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 know now 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.  

                                       CHAPTER  IV    DAPHNAE - TAHPANHES   1886

             When I was exploring in the marshy desert about Tanis, I saw from the top of the 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 is generally supposed to be the Pelusiac Daphnae of Herodotus, 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 40, and formed a settlement which enlarged up to 70.
             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 it 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 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 toTahpanhes 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 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 there.
                This place then appears to have been an old fort on the Syrian frontier guarding the road our 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 towns could be seen over the camp wall, to some 10 or 20 miles. The camp was defended by a wall forty feet thick and probably as high. Beneatheach 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.
                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. 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 entirely unknown at either town.
              The decoration of some of these vases is surprising, as showing at what an early date some patterns were used. On one vase are two bands of design, one of archaic square volute, and the other of the lotus or 'palmetto' pattern,which would otherwise have been supposed to be a century later.The greater part of the vase fragments were found in two chambers of the out buildings unused by the Greeks, and served for rubbish holes, so that when we cleared them out every scrape of 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 was secured, 99 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 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.
             The ruin of all this community came suddenly. Apries trusted to the Greek mercenaries, and defied the old Egyptian party; and Amasis, who had married the royal princess took the national side and ousted his brother in law. Civil war was the consequence, and the Greeks 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 to 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 some way 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. We see then that Daphnae is the complement of Naukratis; they were twin cities, and teach us even more by their contrasts than their resemblance's. We again reach back, as in Naukratis, through the pre-Alexandrine period to the foundation of Greek power and Egyptian civilisation.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.

                                             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. 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 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 Rameses 11, larger than life was found, and fragments of its fellow; also a sphinx, likewise in black granite, which had been so often re-appropriated by various kings, that the original maker could hardly be traced. Outside of the pylon there had been an approach, of which one ornament remained; this is an entirely fresh design, being a column without a 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 111, probably one of a pair by the door, showing that a temple had existed as far back as the 12th 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 26th 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.
             At the back of the shrine lay a black granite altar of Usertesen 111, 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 18th dynasty, 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 14th 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 12 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 3 feet by baling.
            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 26th to 30th 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 mud bricks, both in the walls and the arched roofing.
              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 Herodotus means by the Arabian Buto, in contrast to the other Buto (or 'Temple of Uati') in the western half of the delta.

                                              CHAPTER    V1     UP THE NILE     1887

              When in the end of 1886, I went to work in Egypt, I had no excavations in prospect, having bid good bye to the Egypt Exploration 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 about 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 to 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 that 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 notices of funereal lists of offerings for the benefit of various deceased persons. They abound most in the 11th, 12th, and 13th dynasties, though some of them are later. 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 on the rough granite rocks. 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 (5th dynasty); followed by Unas (5th ), who carved a handsome tablet. Then Ra-meri Pepi (6th) appropriated Ra-kha-nefer's inscription; Ra-nefer-ka Pepi next carved a tablet; in later times, of the 11th dynasty, Antef-aa 11 followed with another tablet; and lastly Amenemhat 1 (12th) placed the sixth inscription here.
               Not only were these granite inscriptions to be copied, but also a great number of graffiti  and traveller's 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 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 11th 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 18th 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 here are also seen camels, ostriches and elephants to be seen.
              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. In those days flourished the forests, which lie now silicified in the silent desert. At Esneh, the desert hills are several miles from the Nile, and on a spur of one - where probably no man sets foot for centuries at a time - I found lying a palaeolithic wrought flint. It was 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 call history.
                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 200 photographs, all with the same size of head, giving several examples of each race that was represented by the Egyptians. In most cases it would have been difficult to photograph the sculptures directly, owing to the difficulties of placing the camera, and the exact time of the day required for the oblique sunlight. Paper squeezes were therefore taken in preference, and a box of these, weighing a few pounds, served as moulds for producing in England a set of plaster casts which weighed a hundred times as much. By waxing the paper several successive casts can be made from one mould, and from one set of the casts I took photographs, which, can be printed interminably, and which are far more clear and distinct than if they were made directly from the stained and darkened sculptures. The paintings were of course photographed directly; where near the outer air enough light was obtained by reflectors of tinned plate; but in distant interiors, such as the tombs of the kings, an explosion of the proper amount of magnesium powder, mixed with chlorate of potash, gave excellent results for light.
             Having finished the Theban work, I then went to Dahshur, and there made a survey around the two large pyramids; but unfortunately I could not obtain the permission to uncover the bases of the pyramids in time to measure more than the southern one. This pyramid is interesting, as it retains the original casing over most of it, and gives us some idea of what the other pyramids looked like before the plundering by Arabs, and perhaps older thieves. The outside is peculiar, as being of a steeper angle below the above, and hence it is often called the 'blunted pyramid'.
            The results of the survey were that it was all designed in even numbers of cubits. The base was 360 cubits, the height 200, divided into 90 cubits steep, and 110 cubits of flatter slope. The space walled in around it was 100 cubits wide. Another small pyramid on the south of it was 100 cubits square. While at Dahshur I also found an interesting point about the ancient roads. The road from Sakkara to the oasis of Ammon was marked out by banks of gravel swept up on either side, leaving a clear space 50 cubits wide. The other road from Sakkara to the Fayum was marked out by milestones all along, there being a larger tablet at each schoenus, or 4 miles, while at each 1000 cubits, or third of a mile, was a lesser pillar on a stone socket.

                               FOR  Chapter  VII   to     Chapter   V111 ,   see  Flinders Petrie 2

                               FOR  Chapter   IX   to      Chapter   X1V ,     see  Flinders Petrie 3

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