Portraits 2ndC           Gilt Mummies               Wrappings             Portraits 2ndC

         Exhibition at The Burrell, Glasgow    DIGGING   FOR DREAMS  March - September 2001  

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                                                    CHAPTER   V11   HAWARA   1888

             When considering the places favourable for future excavations I had named Hawara and Illahun, amongst other sites, to M.Grebaut; and he proposed to me that I should work in the Fayum province in general. The exploration of the pyramids of this district was my main object, as their arrangement, their date, and their builders were quite unknown. Hawara was not a convenient place to work at, as the village was two miles from the pyramid, and a canal lay in between; I therefore determined to form a camp of workmen to live on the spot, as at Daphnae. For this purpose I needed to recruit a party from a little distance, and began my work therefore at the ancient Arsinoe or Crocodilopolis, close to Medient el Fayum.
              Here I cleared the pylon of the temple,of which a few distrubed blocks remain,and found a second mention of Ammenemhat 11 beside that already known; but his work had all been altered and rebuilt, probably by Rameses 11. Four or five different levels of building and reconstruction could be traced, and the depth of rubbish over the approach of the temple in the shallowest part of the mounds was 24 feet. Within the great enclosure of mud brick wall, the site of the temple could be traced by following the bed of sand, on which the foundations had been laid; but scarcely a single stone was left. One reused block had a figure of a king of the 19th dynasty, probably Rameses 11; and this leads us to date as late as Ptolemy 11 the temple which we can trace here. He doubtless built a large temple, as the place received much attention in his time, and was dedicated to his sister wife   Arsinoe; she was specially worshipped along with the great gods, as we know from the stele of Pithom. The only early objects found here were flint knives in the soil of the temple; these belong to the 12th dynasty, as we know from later discoveries.
              A short work of a few days at Biahmu resolved the questions about the so-called pyramids there. So soon as we began to turn over the soil we found chips of sandstone colossi; the second day the gigantic nose of a colossus was found, as broad as a man's body; then pieces of carved thrones, and a fragment of inscription of Amenemhat 111. It was evident that the two great piles of stone had been pedestals of colossal seated monolithic statues, carved in hard quarzite sandstone, and brilliantly polished.These statues faced northward, and around each other was a court yard wall with sloping outer face, and red granite gateway in the north front.The total height of the colossi was about 60 feet from the ground. The limestone pedestal rose 21 feet, then the sandstone colossus had a base of 4 feet, on which the figure, seated on its throne, rose to a height of 35 feet or more. Thus the whole statue and part of its pedestal would be visible  above the enclosing courtyard wall, and it would appear from a distance as if it were placed on a truncated pyramid.
              Having by this time formed and organised a good body of men, I moved over to Hawara, with as many men as I wanted; and the only difficulty was to restrain the numbers who wished to work. The pyramid had never been entered in modern times, and its arrangement was wholly unknown; explorers had fruitlessly destroyed  much of the brickwork on the north side, but yet the entrance was undiscovered.In Roman times the stone casing had been removed , and as the body of the structure was of mud bricks, it had crumbled away somewhat; each side was therefore encumbered with chips and mud. After vainly searching the ground on the north side for any entrance, I then cleared the middle of the east side, but yet no trace of any door could be found. As it was evident then that the plan was entirely different to that of any known pyramid, and it would be a hopeless task to clear all the ground around it, I therefore settled to tunnel to the midst. After many weeks' work (for there was only room for one man), I found that we were halfway through, but all in brick. On one side of the tunnel, however I saw signs of a built wall, and guessing that it had stood around the pit made for the chamber during the building, I examined the rock floor, and found that it sloped down slightly, away from the wall. We turned then to the west, and tunnelling onwards, we reached the great roofing beams of the chamber in a few days. No masons of the district, however could cut through them, and I had to leave the work till the next season. Then, after a further search on all four sides for the entrance, the masons attacked the stone sloping roof, and in two or three weeks' time a hole beneath them was reported; anxiously I watched them enlarge it until I could squeeze through, then I entered the chamber above the sepulchre; at one side I saw a lower hole, and going down I found a broken way into the sandstone sepulchre, but too narrow for my shoulders. After sounding the water inside it, a boy was put down with a rope ladder; and at last, on looking through the hole, I could see by the light of his candle the two sarcophagi, standing rifled and empty. In a day or two we cleared away the rubbish from the original passage to the chamber, and so went out into the passages, which turned and wandered up and down. These were so nearly choked with mud, that in amny parts the only way along them was by lying flat, and sliding along the mud, pushed by fingers and toes.
                    The pyramid had been elaborately arranged so as to deceive and weary the spoiler, and it had apparently occupied a great amount of labour tofrorce an entrance. The mouth was on ground level, on the south side, a quarter of the length from the south west corner. The original explorers descended a pasage with steps to a chamber, from which apparently there was no exit. The roof consisted of a sliding trap door, however, and breaking through this another chamber was reached at a higher level.Then a passage opened to the east, closed with a wooden door, and leading to another chamber with a trap door roof. But in front of the explorer was a passage carefully plugged up with stone; this they thought would lead to the prize, and so all the stones were mined through, only to lead to nothing. From the second trap door chamber a passage led northward to the third such chamber. From that passage led west to a chamber with two wells, whichseemed as if they they led to a tomb, but both were false. This chamber also was almost filled with masonry, which all concealed nothing, but had given plenty of occupation to the spoilers who removed it in vain. A filled up trench in the floor of the chamber really led to the sepulchre; but arriving there no door was to be found, as the entrance had been by the roof , an enormous block of which had been let down into place to close the chamber. So at last the way had been forced by breaking away a hole in the edge of the grassy hard sandstone roofing block, and thus reachingthe chamber and its sarcophagi.
                     By a little widening of the spoilers' hole I succeeded in getting through it into the chamber. The water was up to the middle of my body, ans so exploration was difficult; but the floor was covered with rubbish and chips, which might contain parts of the funereal vessels, and therefore needed searching. The rubbish in the sarcophagi I cleared out myself; and then I set some lads to gather up the scraps from the floor on the flat blade of a hoe, and after searching them they threw them into the sarcophagi. Thus we anxiously worked on for any inscribed fragments; my anxiety being the cartouche of the king, the boys' anxiety for the big bakshish promised, at per hieroglyph found, extra value given for the cartouches. The system worked,for in the first day I got the coveted prize,a piece of alabaster vessel with the name of Amenemhat 111, proving finally to whom the pyramid belonged. Still there was a puzzle as to the second sarcophagus, which had been built up between the great central one and the chamber side. On clearing in the chamber which led to the sepulchre, however they found a beautiful altar of offerings in alabaster, covered with figures of the offerings all named, and dedicated for the king's daughter, Neferu-ptah.
                  Of the actual bodies I found a few scraps of charred bones besides bits of charcoal and grains of burnt diorite in the sarcophagi; also a beard of lazuli for inlaying was found in the chamber.The wooden inner coffins, inlaid with hard stone carving, had therefore been burnt. Thechamber itself is a marvelous work; nearly the whole height of it is carved out of a single block of hard quarzite sandstone, forming a huge tank, in which the sarcophagus was placed. The surface is polished, and the corners so sharply cut that I mistook it for masonry, until I searched in vain for the joints. Of courseit was above water level originally; but all this region has been saturated by a high level canal of Arab times. Afterwards I had all the earth removed from the pyramid passages as far as practicable, but nothing further was found there. No trace of inscription exists on either of the walls or sarcophagi; and but for the funereal furniture, even the very name would not have been recovered.
                  Though the pyramid was the main object at Hawara, it was but a lesser part of my work there. On the south of the pyramid lay a wide mass of chips and fragments of building, which had long generally been identified with the celebrated labyrinth. Doubts, however, existed, mainly owing to Lepsius having considered the brick buildings on the site to have been part of the labyrinth. When I began to excavate the result was soon plain, that the brick chambers were built on the top of the ruins of a great stone structure.; and hence they were only the houses of a vilage, as they had at first appeared to me to be. But beneath them, and far away over a vast area,the layers of stone chips were found; and so great was the mass that it was difficult to persuade visitors that the stratum was artificial, and not a natural formation. Beneath all these frgaments was a uniform smooth bed of plaster, on which the pavement of the building had been laid : while on thesouth side, where the canal had cut across the site, it could beseen how the chip stratum, about six feet thick, suddenly ceased, at what had been the limits of the building.No trace of architectural arrangement could be found, to help in identifying this great structure with the labyrinth : but the mere extent of it proved that it was far larger than any temple known in Egypt. All the temples of Karnak, of Luxor, and a few on the western side of Thebes, might be placed together withinthe vast space of these buildings at Hawara. We know from Pliny and others, how for centuries the labyrinth had been a great quarry for the whole district; and its destruction occupied such a body of masons, that a small town existed there. All this information, and the recorded position of it, agrees so closely with what we can trace, that no doubt can now remain regarding the position of one of the wonders of Egypt.
                 The cemetary of Hawara was a great resource for discoveries, and it proved to be one of the richest fields that I have found, although it was entirely an unexpected prize. The oldest tombs, of the pyramid time, had all been ruined ages ago and the pits reused for the 19th dynasty, the Ptolemaic times, and the crocodile burial of the Roman age. But some slabs from the stone chapels on the surface had fallen down from the tomb shafts, and were thus preserved. The oldest unravaged tomb was of about the end ofthe 26th dynasty; and that was a treasury of amulets, being the funeral vault of the family of a great noble, Horuta. It was half inundated,the water being thigh deep, and though all the woodwork an stucco was spoilt, yet the amulets of stone,and some of pottery were uninjured.The great interment was that of Horuta himself. In a side chamber, branching from the large chamber,a huge sarcophagus of hard and tough limestone had been placed, containing three successive coffins of wood. This was built in solidly with masonry all round it, filling up the whole chamber, so that its very existence was hardly to be suspected by anyone in the large chamber. To clear this out in such a position was hard work; a party of good hands were steadily labouring at it, mainly by contract, for two or three months.
                     Down a well, 40 feet deep, and in a pitch black chamber, splashing about in bitter water, and toiling by candle light, all the work had to be done; and dragging out large blocks of masonry in a very confined space in such circumstances is slow and tedious. While thus mining the way to the expected burial, we lit on a hole in the masonry filled with large ushabtis standing in rows, 200 in all, of the finest workmanship; and, before long, on the other side of the sarcophagus, 200 more were found in a similar recess. But the sarcophagus itself was  most difficult to open. The lid block was nearly 2 feet thick, and almost under water. It was far too heavy for us to move entire, so some weeks were spent in cutting it in two. One piece was then raised, but it prove to be the foot end; and though I spent a day struggling with the inner coffins, sitting in the sarcophagus up to my nose in water, I yet could not draw them out from under the rest of the stone lid. So after some days the men raised that, enough to get one's head in between the underside of it and the water; and then I spent another gruesome day, sitting astride of the inner coffin, unable to turn my head under the lid without tasting the bitter brine in which it sat.
                      But though I got out the first coffin lid, the inner one was firmly fastened down to its coffin; and though I tried every way of loosening the coffin, it was so firmly set in a bed of sand that crowbars and mining with the feet were useless, and it was so low in the water as to be out of arms' reach. The need of doing everything be feeling, and the impossibility of seeing what was done under the black water, made it a slow business. A third day I then attacked it with a helpful friend, Mr Fraser. We drilled holes in the coffin, as it was uninscribed, and fixed in stout iron bolts. Then, with ropes tied to them, all our party hauled again and again at the coffin; it yielded and up came an immense black mass to the surface of the water. With great difficulty we drew it out, as it was very heavy, and we had barely room for it beneath the low ceiling. Anxiously opening it we found a slight inner coffin, and then the body of Horuta himself, wrapped in a network of beads of lazuli, beryl, and silver, the last all decomposed. Tenderly we towed him out to the bottom of the entrance pit. And then came the last, and longed for scene, for which our months of toil had whetted our appetites - the unwrapping of Horuta. Bit by bit the layers of pitch and cloth were loosened, and row after row of magnificent amulets were disclosed, just as they were  laid on in the distant past. The gold ring on his finger which bore his name and titles,the exquisitely inlaid gold birds, the lazuli statuettes delicately wrought, the polished lazuli and beryl and carnelian amulets finely engraved, all the wealth of talismanic armoury, rewarded our eyes with a sight which has never been surpassed to archaeological gaze. No such complete and rich a series of amulets has been seen intact before; and as one by one they were removed all their positions were recorded, and they may now be seen lying in their original order in the Ghizeh Museum.The rest of the family of Horuta lay in the large chamber, some in stone sarcophagi, some only in wooden coffins. They also had their due funereal wealth; and a dozen other sets of amulets rewarded our search. 
                   Of rather late age, perhaps Ptolemaic, was a large wooden coffin that we found; the body and lid were two equal parts, plainly rectangular; and they lay where some old spoiler had left them, separated, and afterwards buried under a heap of stuff thrown out in digging later tombs. The whole surface of this sarcophagus was stuccoed, inside and out, top and bottom, and every part of it finely painted and inscribed. The top of the lid had the deities of the district, the hawk, the Osiris crocodile, and the bennu, with inscriptions; the lower part inside bore other animals, the vulture, the cow, and white hippopotamus; the inside of the lid had had the two crocodile headed Sebeks and the ape; and underneath the lower part, or body, was a long inscription, partly biographical.
                  But perhaps the greatest success at Hawara was in the direction least expected. So soon as I went there I observed a cemetery on the north of the pyramid; on digging in it I soon saw that it was all Roman, the remains of brick tomb chambers; and I was going to give it up as not worth working, when one day a mummy was found, with a painted portrait on a wooden panel placed overits face. This was a beautifully drawn head of a girl, in soft grey tints, entirely classical in its style and mode, without any Egyptian influence. More men were put onto this region, and in two days  another portrait mummy was found; in two days more a third, and then for nine days, not one; an anxious waiting, suddenly rewarded by finding three. Generally three or four were found every week, and I have even rejoiced over five in one day. Altogether sixty were found in clearing the cemetery, some much decayed and worthless, others as fresh as the day they were painted.
                Not only were  these portraits found thus on the mummies, but also the various stages of decoration that led up to the portrait. First the old fashioned stucco cartonnage coverings, purely Egyptian, of the Ptolemies. Next, the same made more solidly, and with distinctive individual differences, in fact modelled masks of the deceased persons. Then arms modelled in one with the bust, the rest of the body being covered with a canvas wrapper painted with mythological scenes, all purely Egyptian. Probably under Hadrian the first portraits are found, painted on a canvas wrapper, but of Greek work. Soon the canvas was abandoned, and a wooden panel used instead; and then the regular series of panel portraits extends until the decline in the third century. All this custom of decorating the mummies arose from them being kept above ground for many years in rooms, probably connected with the house. Various signs of this usage can be seen on the mummies, and in the careless way in which they were at last buried, aftersuch elaborate decoration.
                Though only a sort of undertaker's business, in a provincial town of Egypt, and belonging to the Roman age, when art had greatly declined, yet these paintings give us a better idea of what ancient painting was, and what a high state it must have reached in its prime, than anything yet known, excepting some of the Pompeian frescoes.Mannerism is evident in nearly all of these, and faults may be easily detected; yet there is a spirit, a sentiment, and expression about the better examples which can only be the relic of a magnificent school,whose traditions and skill were not then quite lost. The technical methods of these paintings have been much discussed. Certainly the colours were mixed with melted wax as a medium, and it seems most likely that both the brush and hard point were used. The backing is a very high thin cedar panel, on which a coat of lead colour printing was laid, followed by a fresh coloured ground where the face was to come . The drapery is freely marked in with bold brushfuls of colour, while the flesh is carefully and smoothly laid on with zigzag strokes. 
            Several of these pictures when found were in a perilous state; the film of wax paint was scaled loose from the panel, and they could never be even tilted up on edge without perishing. After finding several in this tender state, and pondering on their preservation, I ventured to try the same process as for the stucco coffin. With care and management it was possible to preserve even the most rotten paintings with fresh wax; and afterwards I extended this waxing to all substances that were perishable, woodwork and leather, as well as stucco and paint. This custom, however. of preserving the mummies above ground, adorned with portraits, gave way about the time of Constantine, or perhaps a little earlier and immediate burial was adopted.Probably this was partly due to the progress of Christianity.
           Instead, therefore, of finding the portraits of the persons, we have their embroidered and richly woven garments; for they were buried in the finest clothes they had when alive. And their possessions were buried with them.In one grave was a lady's casket made of wood inlaid with ivory panels, on which figures were carved and coloured with inlaying.A fine cut glass vase from another grave is of the whitest glass, and excellently cut with the wheel; perhaps the finest example of such work from Roman times. Elaborate toys were found, such as the curious terra cotta  of a sedan chair, borne by two porters, with a lady seated inside; a loose figure that can be removed. In one instance a far more valuable prize accompanied a body; under the head of a lady lay a papyrus roll, which still preserved a large part of the second book of the Illiad.A great quantity of pieces of papyrus, letters and accounts, of Roman age, were also found scattered about in the cemetery. In a large jar buried in the ground lay a bundle of title deeds: they recorded the sale of some monastic property, and were most carefully rolled, bound up with splints of reed, to prevent their being bent, wrapped in several old cloths.
           In yet another respect Hawara proved a rich field. In the coffins, in the graves, and in the ruins of the chambers, were still preserved the wreaths with which the dead had been adorned, and the flowers which the living had brought to the tombs. These wreaths were often in the most perfect condition, every detail of the flowers being complete as if dried for a herbarium.Beside the decorative plants there were many seeds, and remains of edible fruits and vegetables, which had been left behind in the surface chambers of the tombs after the funereal feasts. Altogether the cemetery of Hawara has doubled the extent of our list of ancient Egyptian botany.
            Few places, then, have such varied interests as Hawara; the 12th dynasty, the labyrinth, the amulets of Horuta, the portraits, the botany, and the papyri, are each of special interest and historical value. In this year also I visited the other side of the lake, now known as the Birket Kerun. There, at some miles back in that utter solitude, stands a building of unknown age and unknown purport. It is massively constructed, but without any trace of inscription or ornament, which would tell us its history.That it cannot be as late as the Kasr Kerun, is probable from its being at a much higher level.There would be no object in making a building at some miles distant in the desert, as it is now; and we must rather suppose it to belong to the age when the lake was full, and extended out so far. But where it comes from before the Ptolemaic age we cannot say. The front doorway leads into a long court, which has a chamber at each end, and seven recesses in the long side opposite the entrance.These recesses have had doors, of which the pivot holes can be seen. There are no traces of statues or of sarcophagi about; and the place has been keenly tunnelled and explored by treasure seekers.

                                          CHAPTER      V111     ILLAHUN   1889  -   1890    

            Having finished opening the pyramid of Hawara, the next attraction was that of Illahun, a few miles to the east of it, in the Nile Valley, at the entrance to the Fayum. This pyramid differs from all others in that the lower part is a natural rock cut into shape; upon that a mass of mud brick rises, like that of Hawara, and around the base lie the fragments of the fine limestone casing which originally covered it. As almost all the pyramids had their chambers built in a sort of well in the rock base, I tried this pyramid on such a hypothesis, and therefor cleared the edge of its rocky portion all round as far as possible, to search for the cut into it, expected to lead to the excavation for the chamber. At the south east corner this was difficult, as the rock was there deficient, and the core had been made up of a layer of chips.Still for months we went on clearing the sides and searching. Much other work was going on meanwhile, and by different sources I had found that the pyramid belonged to Usertesesn 11. 
             There were two well entrances to the pyramid , close together. One beyond the pavement was so carefully covered with rubbish that I could not have found it unless I had made a great clearance; by this the sarcophagus and large blocks of masonry were taken in. The smaller well was evidently for the workemen to gain access to the lower side of the blocks that were in course of being taken in: it was hidden by the pavement, was found anciently, and served for spoilers to enter by, and lastly was found again by digging. Had it not been for this smaller well, I believe the pyramid would still have been inviolate.The passage in the inside is rough hewn in the soft rock, and was smeared over with a coat of thin plaster originally, but without a trace of ornament or inscription. It is wide, and high enough to walk upright freely. Atthe end it opened into a chamber lined with blocks of limestone, of whicha large part has been removed, probably by the Ramesside masons, when they plundered the pyramid and its temples for stone. At the west end of this chamber, which runs east and west, is the door to a red granite chamber, containing the sarcophagus. This second chamber is roofed exactly like that of Menkaura's pyramid at Gizeh, with slanting blocks cut out in a curve below. The sarcophagus is one of the finest products of mechanical skill that is known from ancient times. It is of red granite, of a form not before met with, having a wide rectangular brim. The surfaces are all ground flat, but not polished; truth and not effect, was sought for.In front of the sarcophagus stood the alabaster table of offerings, for the Ka of Usertesen 11.
              The chambers in the pyramid are to the east of the centre; and adjoining the east face of the pyramid externally there stood a shrine, on the walls of which were figured in the tables and lists of offerings for the Ka. The sculptures were of beautiful work and brilliantly coloured. The regular temple of the pyramid stood about half a mile to the east of it, on the edge of the desert; and it has been destroyed like the shrine, and by the same hands, as two cartouches of Ramessu 11 were found on the blocks; several beads etc., and I found the name of Usertesen 11 on a piece of a granite pillar of Ramessu 11 at Ahnas, some miles to the south, showing what purpose Illahun had been plundered. The outline of the temple can be traced by the thick brick wall which surrounded it.The plan is square, and it seems to have consisted of brick work externally, lined with limestone masonry. But of the internal arrangement not a trace can be recovered.Probably a shrine of granite stood at then west end of the court, and objects of sandstone in the area, judging by the position of the chips.
             The great prize at Illahun was unknown and unsuspectedby anyone. On the desert adjoining the north side of the temple, I saw evident traces of a town, brick walls , houses and pottery: moreover the pottery was of a style unknown to me. The town wall started out in a line with the face of the temple; and it dawned on me that this could hardly be other than the town of the pyramid builders, originally called Ha-Usertesen-hotep, and now known as Kahun. A little digging soon put it beyond doubt, as we found cylinders of that age, and no other; so that it was evident that actually had in hand an unaltered town of the twelfth dynasty, regularly laid out by the royal architect for the workmen and stores, required in building the pyramid and its temple. After a few holes had been made, I formed up the workmen in a line along the outermost street, and regularly cleared the first line of chambers ,turning the stuff intothe street; then the chambers beyond those were emptied out and searched. The only part not quite cleared was where habitatations had been formed in Roman times by lime-burners, who had disturbed the place and destroyed the ancient walls. Every chamber as it was cleared was measured and planned, and we can see the exact scheme of the architect, and where he expanded the town as time went on.  
            The general outline was a square mass; walled on the west, and east sides, but open on the south to the Nile plain , and not fully built out in this direction. In this space were buildings adjoining the wall all round; within them a main street around three sides of a square block of buildings in the middle; and minor streets subdividing the buildings. Then outside the wall on the west the town was enlarged bya further space, also walled, and divided by a long main street, and cross streets all the way along it. The larger houses all have a court ,or atrium, with columns around the middle of it, and in the centre a small stone tank let into the ground with a square of limestone around it five feet each way. Inthe rooms pottry was often found; and manyparts of the town having been deserted when the building of the pyramid was finished, the empty rooms were used as rubbish holes by the inhabitants who remained.Tools were also found hidden in the dust which had lain in the chambers.
           The domestic remains were of great interest;beside the pottery there were balls of thread, linen, cloth, knives and tools of copper, and of flint, many wooden tools, hoes, rakes. Also games as whip-tops, tip-cats, draught boards, dolls. Many pieces of furntiture were found, among them the greater part of a finely made slender chair of dark wood inlaid with ivory pegs. Blue-glazed pottery was not unusual, several figures of animals and pieces of bowls were found.   
            Not only do we in this town drop into the midst of the daily life and productions of this early age, but the documents of the time also remain. In various chambers papyri were found; some carefully sealed up and put by, but mostly thrown aside as waste paper. One of the largest is a hymn of praise to Usertesen 111; some pages of a medical work, some of a veterinary papyrus, and innumerable parts of letters, accounts, and memoranda make up the collection.
              Some later times have left their traces in this place, although the bulk of it is purely twelfth dynasty. The main prize was a family tomb, proabably of the end of the nineteenth dynasty. A cellar cut into the rock was used as a sepulchre. More than a dozen coffins were piled into it, each containing several bodies, all the wrappings of which were reduced to black sooty dust. For hours I was occupied in opening coffin after coffin, carefully searching the dust inside each,cataloguing everything as I found it, overhauling the pottery and stone vases heaped in the chambers, and handing everything out to the native lad whom I took down to help me. Though none of the interments were rich, yet there were interesting objects, and some foreign; and above all we had the whole find completely recorded, and the postitions of things noted exactly as theyhad been left by the interrers.
            The next period of importance at Illahun is from the twenty second to the twenty fifth dynasties. The hills near the pyramid had been much used for rock tombs and mastabas of the pyramid period; but these had been plundered and destroyed in early times, and the excavations were re-used during the later Bubastite and Ethiopian dynasties. These interments are generally rude, the coffins seldom having any intelligble inscription; but mostly sham copies of the usual formula , put on by a decorator whocould not read. The only fine tomb I found here was that of a priestess, Amenardus; her sarcophagus has carved inscriptions along the edges and down the corner posts, and the coffin and that of her father arefinely painted. Many of the mummies have bead net-works and patterns upon them, with figures of winged scarabs, the four genii, the ba bird, and other emblems,all executed in coloured beads. When we entered a tomb, I opened the coffins in the gentlest way, drawing or cutting out the pegs which fastened them; and then a glance inside showed if any bead work existed, and then I began to preserve them. The amulets found in these tombs are all of the figures of deities,especially Bast, and are of pottery covered with light olivey-green glazes, quite different from those of the nineteenth or twentieth dynasties.
              Yet a later period had left its remains at Illahun. In Coptic times, about the sixth and seventh century A.D. the ground all about the temple, and on a hill near the canal, was used as a cemetery. Though I could not spend time on clearing such remains myself, the people of the place readily grupped up by their forefathers, and disposed of their garments to anyone who would buy them. Illahun has then proved of great value to our knowledge of Egyptian civilisation; it has shown us a completely arranged town of the middle kingdom; it has surrounded us with all the products and manufactures of that age; it reveals the simultaneous use of finely wrought flint tools with those of copper, when bronze was at yet unknown; it provides us with the writings of the period including a will two thousand years older than than any known before; the pyramid proves to be of a new design to us, and contains one of the finest examples of mechanical skill; while of later ages we learn the date of Phoenician pottery, and of the earliest figured Greek vases, and can trace the history of the use of amulets. Of the blanks in the history ofcivilisation, one more has been filled up.

                                    For   Chapter  1   -   Chapter VI       see  Flinders Petrie  1
                                    For   Chapter   IX  -  Chapter  XIV    see   Flinders Petrie 3

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