El Kab

Another cist (316) lay at the bottom of a shallow well near the large group of mastabas (1·50 m. by 1·10 m. by 1·60 deep). The sides of the cist were broken down, and many of the bones were disturbed, but a part of the spinal column and the legs sufficed to show that the body had lain with the head north, but on its right side.

No. 312 has been already mentioned among the mastabas. The cist lay in a small chamber, the body on its left side, with head to the north.

CHAPTER II.

M. Amélineau’s excavations at Abydos began at the end of 1896—the winter after our Naqada campaign—and many of the objects he found are already exhibited at Ghizeh, others are at Paris, and a few have found their way to England. Among them are many pots and stone bowls of undoubted late Neolithic type, with whole classes of objects which did not occur at Naqada, stelæ, inscribed scarabs of limestone, and clay seals stamped with the Ka names of kings. The long pots on which these inscribed clay seals still fit are of a type found once at Ballas, and so prove some connection of the Ka names with the contracted burials.

This year Sethe’s important paper (A. Z. XXXV, 1) identifying three of Amélineau’s names with known kings of the Ist and IInd dynasties, has brought a new precision into the whole question, but this, of course, was not known to us at El Kab. Yet Amélineau’s association of the Libyan pottery with inscriptions of an archaic style, which would most naturally be dated long before the IVth dynasty, made our later dating of the pottery improbable, and necessitated a re-examination of the evidence. The crucial case at Ballas was the secondary burial of a Libyan found in one of a group of stairway mastabas. The mastabas were believed to be of the IVth dynasty, because the fragments of pottery and of alabaster bowls found in them were similar to IVth dynasty objects from the cemetery of Medum.

16. This dating of the alabaster was, as we now think, rather too late, but the interment certainly proved that one Libyan died when a tomb of the early Old Kingdom had already been plundered, and lay open, affording an easy means of burial. But not only was this intrusive burial found in one stairway tomb; green paint and stone vases with horizontally-pierced handles, were found in others of the same group. These Libyan traces were also interpreted as the remains of secondary interments, but when at El Kab, I saw the same Libyan remains in the stairway tombs there, it immediately became clear that the malachite, vases, etc., more probably belonged to the original interments, not to secondary ones, that the stairway tombs (perhaps, also, the other mastabas) were but another form of Neolithic burial, and that the earlier Neolithic tombs were anterior to the Old Empire. As the digging went on, other scraps of evidence came to support this view. The coarse pottery which lay in heaps over and near the mastabas of the IVth dynasty is identical with that found in some of the small Neolithic graves.

A vase of hard red ware found in Ka-mena’s tomb, which was certainly of Sneferu’s time, was almost indistinguishable from a Libyan form common at Ballas.

One of the incised bowls—a rare but distinctive species of Libyan pottery—was found in a stairway tomb at El Kab.

The small late-Libyan graves lay between the mastabas of the time of Sneferu, not interfering with them, or dug through them, giving the impression that all were approximately of the same date.

In one tomb there was found, with undoubted Libyan pottery, a green steatite cylinder of a type known in the Old Kingdom.

In a walk taken one day over the cemetery of Kom el Ahmar, opposite to El Kab, I observed again the same mixture of Old Kingdom and Libyan pottery near a group of mastabas.

17. To this evidence must be added some considerations about the first cemetery of Naqada and Ballas, which were felt by us from the beginning as difficulties in the way of accepting the later dating to the VII-X dynasty.

The entire absence of distinctly Egyptian objects from so large a series of tombs, and even from the villages of the same period, was difficult to explain on the supposition that the Egyptians were already in the land.

The Libyans, too, as lovers of fine pottery, would surely have learnt the use of the wheel from the Egyptians, if they had come in contact with them at all; yet all the Libyan pottery (with the rarest exceptions) is handmade.

The Libyans habitually placed green paint among the other toilet articles buried near the head. The Egyptians of the early Old Empire are sometimes represented with green paint upon the face. It is more natural to suppose that this was a fashion inherited from the praedynastic times, than to suppose that so peculiar a mode of ornamentation was practised at two independent periods in the history of the country.

Lastly, there is the negative evidence from the mound of Nubt. Here Dr. Petrie found on the surface walls of the XVIIIth dynasty, with inscriptions and dated pottery; below them walls of the XIIth dynasty, with pottery again, and lower still, walls and layers of pottery of the Old Kingdom. But between these last two, no scrap of the Libyan pottery occurred, though a Libyan town lay but a quarter of a mile away.

On an examination, then, of the whole evidence from our two cemeteries of Naqada and El Kab, I came to the conclusion that our first dating had been not early enough, that the latest type of tomb at Naqada was contemporary with the mastabas of the Old Empire, and that the earliest type (characterised by dissevered skeletons, very fine flint knives, great quantities of ashes, and a small number of red and black pots of good quality) must be attributed to a much earlier period.

Since then much more information has come to light. M. de Morgan’s second volume of “Recherches sur les Origines de l’Égypte” contains a summary of the discoveries made by M. Amélineau at Abydos, together with an account of the great royal tomb found by M. de Morgan himself at Naqada. M. Amélineau’s finds are recognised as being chiefly of the first three dynasties, and on an ivory plaque from the royal tomb of Naqada, Dr. Borchardt has pointed out the name of Menes himself.

The objects from this tomb are now exposed in the museum at Ghizeh, and it is interesting to observe that the pottery, the slate palettes, and the flint knives are distinctly of the later type of Ballas.

It has, then, become now fairly clear that the earliest known inhabitants of Egypt were a tall, fair race akin to the modern Kabyles. They buried their dead in a contracted position with the head to the south, and in the earliest times either mutilated the dead before burial, or kept the bodies for a long time before the final burial. The relative dates of the different varieties of their tombs can be made out, and the graves with mutilated bodies found at Naqada are much earlier than those at Abydos containing the names of I-II dynasty kings. At some period which we cannot yet date, even on the rough scale of Libyan pottery, another race or races entered the country, bringing with them writing, the practice of mummification, the art of building in brick with recessed panels, and perhaps, as M. de Morgan suggests, metals. Thus was formed the Egyptian people of historic times.

18. A point that has not been explained is the different position of the bodies in the open graves and in the stairway tombs. In the former, the head lies south; in the stairways and in the graves of Medum, it is to the north.

The burials, too, under the large pots which we call majūrs, are not understood, nor is their exact period known. As they were found in the later cemeteries of Ballas, El Kab, and Kom el Ahmar, but not at Naqada, it seems likely that they belong to the later division of the Libyan period, viz., after the Egyptian invasion, perhaps even after the time of Menes. But to which race, if to either, is not clear.

CHAPTER III.

19. Inside the town walls, never outside, were found a few examples of a distinct type of tomb, with underground brick arches, pottery akin to that of the usual XIIth dynasty, but not identical with it, and stone vases of distinctive shapes. The types of pottery are shown in Pl. X, 1-28, the alabaster vases in X, 1-6.

In Pl. XXIV some walls in broken line are seen which cut through the walls of three mastabas, which last are shown in dead black. The tombs in question lay parallel with these walls, some within the square chambers, some also outside; and the walls are, roughly, parallel with the great walls of the town. The method of construction seems to have been as follows: An oblong excavation, about 6 m. long by 2 wide and 3 m. deep, was made in the gravel. About half the length of this was needed for the tomb; the other half formed a rough sloping staircase for the workmen. The sides of the grave were built of brick walls, and these were covered by an arch of brick about 1·50 m. high. In this the body was laid at full length, on the left side, the head to the north; in front of the body was a great mass of pottery. The interest of this set of tombs lies in the bearing they may have on the question of the date of the wall, for if it be granted that these are probably of the early XIIth dynasty (as the pottery suggests), then we have early XIIth dynasty tombs inside, and tombs of the reign of Amenemhat III outside the walls. (There were, however, two tombs inside the walls in which the remains of the pottery were much like those in the tombs outside.) Now there is a stela from El Kab, to which Dr. Spiegelberg calls my attention (published in Stobart, Egypt. Antiq., Pl. I), which states that Amenemhat III restored the walls at El Kab which Usertesen II had built. What walls these were the stela does not state, but the evidence from the pottery would support the idea that they were the great town walls. And if this be so, the common pottery of the Middle Kingdom can now be split into two sections, between which the reign of Usertesen II will form the dividing line.

20. The tombs in detail.

In No. 203 there were only two pots and a marble vase. Traces of the roofing arch were found. The skeleton as it lay measured 1·80 m. long.

No. 205 contained pottery of shapes XIII, 2, 12, 27, 24, 20.

No. 216 contained four examples of XIII, 5, one each of 2, 19, 4, and about fifty of the small saucer, 12a.

No. 242 contained 26, 2, 3.

No. 255 contained a great mass of pottery of nearly all the shapes (2, 5, 4, 12, 9, 17), much of which lay at a higher level than the two bodies; of these, one lay upon its back, the other in the regular position. Before the face of the northern body was an alabaster vase (X, 4), a small shell and a fragment of bronze rod. Another alabaster jar (X, 3) stood by the hips of the southern skeleton.

No. 264 was in better condition than most, and contained a great number of pots, including more than fifty of the shape XIII, 22, and many of XIII, 20. Nearly all were, however, broken, for, as in all these tombs, the arch had fallen in. This tomb contained also a string of beads, barrel beads of lapis lazuli, carnelian and gold foil, and small discs of gold.

In No. 265 were found more than two hundred pots scattered in all directions; a few were nested in a recess halfway down the side of the tomb. All the shapes XIII, 1-28, except 16 and 22, were found in this tomb. There was no skeleton. A hole had been pierced in the base of every pot after baking.

One group of tombs of this period (v. Pl. XXIV) had apparently been made at one time. In three of them the skeletons remained with two or three coarse pots laid before the face. Outside the enclosure wall of another of these groups of tombs was a heap of saucers (like XIII, 12), painted inside with a rough cross of white paint. These are, by the fabric, probably of the same period as the tombs.

21. In the great XIIth dynasty cemetery outside the town the graves were of different construction, consisting of a long and narrow shaft from which, at both the north and the south ends, opened a chamber. But two, or perhaps three, tombs of this form were found inside the walls. This cemetery was well known to the Arabs, and a few years ago a party of the Qurneh dealers, armed with a bogus Museum permit, dug there for several weeks. The tombs they had rifled could be distinguished from tombs that were intact or had been plundered in early times by the sharper edges of the depressions left. Time has rounded over the traces of the earlier robberies, so that anciently robbed tombs look much like those which are intact, but in which the roof has fallen in causing a dip in the ground not unlike the top of a tomb-shaft. The cemetery lies in a shoal in the dry stream-bed, at whose mouth El Kab was placed. This shoal is a great bank of gravel and a fine clay-like detritus, the beds of which lie alternately, the thickness of each varying in different parts. The practice in the XIIth dynasty was to sink the tomb-shaft until a layer of gravel was reached sufficiently strong for a chamber to be safely cut out of it. The chambers were about 2 m. square and probably rather less than 1·50 m. high, but they were made flat-roofed, and in most cases the roof had fallen in, crushing the bones and often also the pottery below. Even if the roof was complete when we opened the tomb, it would usually fall before we could examine and clear out the interment. With only the warning of the fall of a single pebble, or just a little gutter of sand, a mass of perhaps two tons would suddenly drop with a thud. On two occasions a man was caught by some part of the fall, and once, just as the helpless man was being dug out, a clumsy helper dislodged a few more hundredweight and buried him again. These are anxious moments, for when this shifting ground has once begun to slip, the whole side of a tomb may fall at once. Happily we had no serious accident, though there were many narrow escapes. It is necessary in such work to watch the men very carefully, and to insist on their taking reasonable care, for they will, if left alone, burrow beneath dangerously overhanging masses of soil rather than take the trouble of removing them. The method in which the door of the burial-chamber was closed was not at first clear; but four or five of the large jars (Pl. XIV) were so often found just inside the entrance that it seemed probable they had been used as a building material, just as the peasants near Keneh now use the spoilt water-jars from the potteries there. Later on two of the doorways were found actually blocked up in this way—three jars in the lower tier, two more above them, and the interstices filled with mud. Probably, then, these large pots were the common water-jars of the Middle Kingdom. Other tomb-doors were blocked with bricks, very roughly laid. Coffins were very rare; there was one of unbaked clay, long and narrow; and a trace of wood (No. 121) in another grave may have been part of a coffin. But the soil of El Kab is so damp and full of salt that unpainted wooden coffins may have disappeared without leaving any trace. The same causes have doubtless removed the clothes in which the dead were buried, for of these I saw no trace. The most remarkable fact was the entire absence of mummification, at least, of any effective kind. In the ground near the good XVIIIth dynasty tombs, mummies were found, perhaps the servants of the great men of the inscribed tombs. There seemed no great difference in the conditions to which these mummies and the bodies of the XIIth dynasty people had been exposed. Yet no trace of mummy-cloth, dried skin, hair, or bitumen was ever met with in the earlier cemetery. Nor in the early burials that I opened at Ballas were any mummies found, and certainly most of the mummies known belong to the XVIIIth dynasty or later. Is it possible that mummification was confined to the upper classes until the great increase of wealth in the XVIIIth dynasty led to the wider adoption of the custom?

Some of the later Neolithic bodies were, however, dried, either by artificial means or by some property of the soil, so that the whole body could be lifted out without any of the limbs snapping off. It is reported that the body of an engineer, who, not many years ago, died and was buried at Assuan, and afterwards exhumed to be sold as a mummy, was dried up in this way.

A chamber generally contained more than one body; four was a not uncommon number, and in one chamber eight persons, probably women, lay side by side. This fact certainly agrees badly with the idea just expressed of the absence of mummification. The objects found in the graves were of well-known types. Bottle-shaped vases at the head and feet, alabaster kohl pots, kohl sticks of ivory, bronze mirrors without handles, paint-slabs with their pestles and spatulæ of serpentine and basalt, with beads of green glaze and various kinds of hard stone, were the regular staple of our finds. And the date of these was already well known from Kahun and other places; indeed the date of this cemetery could be seen at once from the chips of pottery lying on the surface. This conclusion was confirmed by the two private stelæ (Pl. IV), and a cylinder of Amenemhat III, found in one necklace. Inscriptions were extremely rare; there were few scarabs, and perhaps the most interesting object was the plain alabaster statuette (Pl. V, 2), which was found close to the skull of its owner. This was the only figure of the kind found in the cemetery, and is probably the earliest dated ushabti. It represents a mummy-shaped figure; no hands, hoe, or basket can be seen, but the face is well executed.

The tombs were, of course, often robbed, how often, it was difficult to decide, for the destruction caused by the falling roof is very similar to that caused by early robbery. But it was very seldom that a skull could be preserved, or that the exact position of the bones in the body could be worked out. There had been very little re-use of the shafts; in one occurred pottery and a mirror of the XVIIIth dynasty, in another a Roman lamp; but these were exceptions; it was purely a Middle Kingdom cemetery.

22. A fine collection of beads was obtained, chiefly in hard stone. In one tomb alone (No. 156) I spent most of two days trying to recover the order in which the beads had been strung on the necklaces. Seven people had been buried in one chamber of this tomb; a great mass of pebbles had fallen from the roof, smashed the bones and pottery, and so scattered the beads that some care was needed to keep together those from one string. Some of the bodies were adorned with necklace, bracelets, and anklets, and had also a string of beads round the waist.

The commonest beads were spherical and barrel-shaped, of carnelian, haematite, and amethyst, and discs of shell, these last the commonest of all. In green felspar there were small flat discs, hawks, and hippopotamus heads. Sphinxes with human heads are generally of amethyst. Uninscribed scarabs, in carnelian, amethyst, and jasper, were not uncommon.

CHAPTER IV.

23. Singularly little is left in El Kab of any period later than the Middle Kingdom, unless, indeed, the great walls be of later date than we have supposed. The broken pottery inside the town enclosure, that is the south-west corner of the great square, seems to be of various periods, but to contain a large quantity of a fabric most like that of the XXVIth dynasty. As Nectanebo rebuilt the temple here, it is natural to suspect that this late pottery is of his reign or near it. Masses of similar pottery are to be found thrown out from several of the large tombs, in and behind the hill of Paheri. These tombs are probably of the XVIIIth dynasty, and were re-used for piles of poor burials at the later date. Of poor burials of the XVIIIth dynasty only two were found. These were in the long coffins of that coarse red earthenware, fragments of which may be seen by the tourist on his way to the tomb of Paheri. There are a few robbed tombs near the foot of the hill, but no large cemetery is known. It is possible that El Kab was not a very large town at this period; the family of Paheri and Aahmes may have been the only great house of the district.

24. Some examination was made of the beautiful little temple of Amenhotep III, which lies an hour’s walk up the desert, not with the view of copying it, for that work had already been undertaken by Mr. Clarke, but in order to discover, if possible, where the original temple was. It seems more than probable that all the VIth dynasty inscriptions on the great detached rock near the temple were made by pilgrims visiting a shrine; many fragments of Old Kingdom vases also are to be found lying near. It at first occurred to me that a cemetery of the Old Kingdom might lie here, and a search was made in all likely, and some unlikely, places, but nothing was found, except a broken water-jar with a late Greek inscription. The early pottery near the temple was then turned over; it appeared to be a mere rubbish heap, with no sign of tomb or of brick building. It lies on the slope of the bank of loose detritus, on which the temple itself is built. The torrent which, from time to time, sweeps down the old river-bed, is, at this point, wearing away its southern bank. Below the heap of old pottery is a little vertical cliff, 4 m. high, in so soft a rock that it is clear the steep face has been recently formed, and the temple itself is threatened by a small stream bed behind it. It may be, then, as Professor Sayce first suggested, that the original temple stood on the northern part of the shoal which is now washed away; this idea is confirmed by our finding in the stream bed opposite the present temple the early table of offerings shown in Pl. IV, 1, with many more small fragments of inscription on pieces of sandstone. The original temple, then, has gone, the pile of pottery thrown out from it will be carried away too; even the temple of Amenhotep may be undermined within no very long period. The effects of sudden storms in the desert are greater than might be supposed. There is no vegetation to stop and absorb the rain, the ground is excessively hard, and all that does not immediately sink into the soil runs rapidly down into the larger watercourses, and forms in a few hours a deep and broad stream. Such a storm occurred three years ago at El Kab, and the inhabitants tell us that, for two days, a tributary stream entered the Nile there. The railway engineers have had to provide for the recurrence of such spates.

25. The foundation deposits may be considered together. They came from two temples—the large one within the walls, and the small temple of Thothmes III, which lies to the north of the town, and west of the hill of Paheri. In the latter the deposits were very numerous for so small a temple (v. Pl. XXVI). Under each corner of the main wall was one of the little pits filled with sand, which have now become so familiar, and at a metre’s distance along the side wall was another and larger deposit. The pits were about ·60 m. in diameter; in two, there was at the bottom a recess, filled with the small cups of brown clay. The objects are all closely similar to those found in the other deposits of this reign at Koptos and Nubt. One shape of pot, however (XXI, 14), has not been seen in a foundation deposit before, and the flat tiles (15 cm. long) of blue glaze, one in each deposit, must be mentioned. All the deposits were carefully unearthed, and the position of the different objects noted, but there was no obvious design in the arrangement.

The deposits found under the great temple are of more interest; those of Amenhotep II, under walls covered with inscriptions of Rameses II, give one more instance of the latter’s usurpations. Deposits of two other distinct classes contained no inscriptions of kings’ names, and cannot be dated. Their position is shown in the very rough sketch of the plan of the temple in Pl. I.

The contents of the different deposits is given below:—

N. 1. A polygonal sandstone mortar (XXI, 46), twenty small cups (43), three small round dishes, three taller pots (44), flat tablets of red and green glass, a bronze pan (30), five long glass beads (38), the green glaze figure (29) like a small ushabti, a small green glaze model of an ox with the legs tied together, the bronze models (33, 34, 35), a tile of dull green glaze, a model clay brick, a small piece of bitumen, and a piece of resin which burns with a smell like myrrh.

N. 4. Sandstone mortar, eye in green glaze (28), the other objects as in N. 1, but with the addition of tablets of calcite and lead.

N. 5. contained the glaze block (40), a bronze knife, a little brick of myrrh, and pottery, as in the others.

N. 2. and N. 3. consisted each of a single object, one a small oblong block of iron 1½ inch long, and the other a tablet of blue frit (like 37).

These last two deposits clearly do not belong to the same builder as the rest.

The deposits of Amenhotep II contained alabaster models, the inscriptions identical with those of Thothmes III, excepting the change of cartouche.

26. The temple to the east of the central eastern gate of the town was excavated, and a XIIth dynasty tomb was found beneath it. The walls had been carried away, but the floor of the temple was nearly complete, and from the scratches made upon it by the masons the plan was recovered. This will be published by Mr. Clarke. No foundation deposits were discovered, and the only scrap of inscription was a part of the cartouche of Nectanebo.

27. No certain solution can be given of the question of the date of the great wall. Reasons for thinking it to be the work of Usertesen II have been already given, but several attempts were made to test this hypothesis. The base of the wall was cleared at several points to search for any accumulation of rubbish left by the builders, and all the gateways were examined for foundation deposits. In the east gate, at a height of 3 feet above the stone pavement, there was a layer of potsherds, painted with a rough decoration of comma-shaped dashes, and with them were some fragments of an ostracon written in late demotic. This would show that the gateway was already partly ruined and blocked in Roman (?) times. And between the row of mastabas to the north and the great wall were found the foot of an ushabti, perhaps of the XXVIth dynasty, and a pot (Pl. XX, 13), probably Roman. The first was on the ground level, the second 5 feet above it. But the position of these objects only shows that the sand-heap had not reached its present level when they were dropped, and I observed nothing quite inconsistent with the early date suggested. It should be added, however, that the stonework of the gates and the arch in the north wall seem, to Mr. Somers Clarke’s experienced eye, to show some features of a much later style. These he will describe in his own work on El Kab.

28. A group of late bronzes were found at one point in the south of the great enclosure. They were 800 in number, each mounted on a little wooden base. One (Pl. V, 3) was a fine piece, representing Nekheb adored by a kneeling figure. The rest were Osiris figures, except one, which represented Imhetep. About a hundred were 5 inches high, or upwards, of fair workmanship, made in thin bronze cast on a core. They were all piled together in a space 1·1 m. by ·6 m., not near to any tomb.

29. Near the south-east corner of the town (Pl. XXIV) was a peculiar brick building, consisting of four rows of brick pillars, six in each row, enclosed in a surrounding wall. The pillars were about 2 m. square, the passages between them only about ·80 m. wide. The actual height of the brickwork was 1·50 m. or less, but the building may have been a high one, for the base of a brick staircase remained between two of the pillars. Throughout the building were great numbers of pots, chiefly broken, of a long bottle-shape with a wide mouth, and pierced at the bottom, with a hole an inch wide (XX, 14); these pots exactly fitted certain holes left at regular intervals in the brickwork. Pots nearly of this shape, but shorter, are still used in Egypt, being built into the walls of pigeon-towers to serve as nesting-places for the birds. So far as the pottery guides us, the building might then be of Arab times, but the large size of the bricks (34 cm. × 17·5 × 11), part of a stone window found on the south side, and the smooth surface of the site before we began to dig, make it unlikely that the structure is recent.

CHAPTER V.

30. Pl. I—Nos. 1, 2 and 3 are the plan, elevation, and longitudinal section of one (264) of the sunk arch tombs believed to belong to the early XIIth dynasty.

No. 4 gives the plan of the chamber in the IVth dynasty tomb of Ka-mena; 5 and 6 are rough notes of the stone walls on the east and south sides of the same chamber.

No. 7 gives the plan of the important tomb in which an inscribed cylinder was found in association with Neolithic pots (No. 166, § 13).

No. 8 is a rough-sketch plan of the great temple of El Kab, inserted to show the position of the foundation deposits.

31. Pl. II.—1. The stone vessels of the Neolithic period and the Old Kingdom, as they were shown at University College. Only one was perfect; even those that look most complete were picked out in small pieces from the gravel or mud, and were put together by the help of our friends in England. On the right hand are five slate paint slabs of the later Neolithic type; nearer the wall are diorite bowls, alabaster tables, flat dishes of limestone and alabaster, a bronze ewer (from Ka-mena), and a pottery model of a granary.

No. 2 shows all the small objects from the important tomb with a majūr burial (166)—shells, ivory disc, ivory hairpins, a flint flake, a steatite cylinder, beads, ivory bracelets, two pots and two stone bowls. (For inscription on the cylinder v. Pl. XX, 29).

No. 3 represents the objects from Ka-mena’s tomb as photographed in front of our house soon after being found (larger size in Pl. III, 2).

No. 4 shows a mastaba wall when just excavated.

No. 5 is a view of our house with the stacks of pottery before it.

Pl. III.—No. 1. The sandstone statue of Nefer-shem-em.

No. 2. The bronze and stone objects from Ka-mena of the time of Sneferu, with whose name the flat diorite bowl below was inscribed. The central bowl is of very light-coloured, translucent diorite, and the deeper one of porphyry. Below are model tools in copper. (These are given in outline, Pl. XVIII, 56-65.)

Pl. IV. (Note by Dr. Spiegelberg.)

1. Table of offerings from dry stream bed on desert near Amenhotep’s temple, dedicated with the usual formula addressed to Anubis, Osiris, and Nekhbet, by “the confidential friend of the king, the treasurer, chief prophet, destroying the evil (?) [Kfau? asf?]” ... and to his father “deserving well of his god, the confidential friend of the king, the treasurer,[A] chief prophet, privy councillor of the royal treasure Shema[.a].”

This is the person mentioned in a rock inscription of El Kab, published by Stern (Aeg. Zeitschr., 1875, Pl. I r.). By this identification we can claim this tablet for the VIth dynasty.

2. The inscription of this XIIth dynasty sandstone stela from the cemetery must be divided in the middle. The right half—“the well-deserved of Anubis, Usrtsn, son of Srtuy (?)”—relates to the chief personage holding a nabút in the left hand and the well-known sceptre of command in the right.

The person behind, who carries a long Nymphaea caerulea, is “his beloved son, Khuy, son of Mryt-[[.a]]tfs,” and may be the dedicator of this stela. So we have the following genealogy:—

Srtuy (?)
|
Usrtsn—Mryt-[[.a]]tfs
|
Khuy

3. Limestone stela of the end of the XIIth dynasty, from the cemetery, dedicated by a certain Sabna to his father, who had the same name and was a prophet of Amon.

In the first line we have the formula of offering addressed to Osiris, the next contain this genealogy:—

Ankht[.a]t I
|
Ankht-[.a]t II = Sabna I = Mrt-[.a]ts
| |
Ḥny Sabna II

Pl. V.—No. 1. A figure of blue-glazed ware from a XIIth dynasty tomb (No. 1). It represents a very flat-headed deity, with the youthful side-lock, the body in mummy form, the darker lines representing a bead network.

No. 2 is the alabaster ushabti of the XIIth dynasty.

No. 3 is the fine bronze (height 19 cm.), now at Ghizeh, representing a man adoring Nekheb; his hands are side by side before him, palms down. This is by far the finest of the 800 bronzes found together; of these 700 were worthless, the rest ordinary Osiris figures.

No. 4. A group of the peculiar pots in which the characters of a table of offerings and a model of a house seem to be combined. They are only known in the Middle Kingdom, occurred at Ballas as well as El Kab, and are common in museums. The offerings inside can be seen in good examples to be the head and legs of an ox, bread (?), and jars of water. One model shows the roof of a hut made of logs of wood, and the outside staircase.

No. 5. A group found together, consisting of a sa amulet of bronze, a dark steatite cylinder, and a little glazed steatite draughtsman with a human head and traces of some sign inscribed below. The inscription on the cylinder is copied in Pl. XX, 28, and is rather puzzling. The name in a cartouche seems to be Ka-kau-ra, which is not that of a known king. As the pottery in the tomb is of the XIIth dynasty, and the tomb is in the cemetery of that period, one might read Kha-kau-ra, Usertesen III, but his Ka name, Neter-kheperu, is known, and cannot be read in the other name on the cylinder. The cylinder is of a type known in the IVth and Vth dynasties, and Dr. Petrie suggests that it may be Men-kau-ra, and that his Ka name was Men-maat, the maat being read with the straight sign only. If this be so, we must suppose that the owner of this grave had found the cylinder in some ancient site.

No. 6 shows one of the small clay figures of Nekheb found behind the stone work of the east gate.

Pl. VI.—No. 1. A group of the finest stone vases. The upright dish is of diorite; rather more than two-thirds of it was recovered, all in small pieces. It is inscribed suten biti Sneferu. The jar on the left is of green slate, the central bowl of porphyry, and the rest alabaster. All are probably of the IVth dynasty or earlier.

No. 2. On the left, in the back row, the commonest coarse pot of the IVth dynasty, on the right, a less known type (XII, 29); in the centre one of the pots of Neolithic type from Ka-mena’s tomb. In front is the inscribed piece of majūr and the model of a granary, the latter from Ka-mena.

32. Pl. VII.—The upper of these two sketches by Mr. Clarke shows the two mastabas, C and D, in course of excavation, the great wall of El Kab behind. The lower view is between D and E (cf. Pl. XXIII). It shows the two boundary walls in the centre, the steep face of sand in front, and (piled on the walls) a lot of the coarse pottery, which was here found in great quantity. The measuring rod is the 2-metre pole used in assessing the men’s work.

Pl. VIII.—No. 1 is a view of another mastaba. The brickwork, which blocks up the northern (i.e., the nearer) niche, is of later date. The two niches, or false doors, the passage or chapel, the two hollows in the brickwork that were filled with earth, and the well, in this case a very large one, are indicated in this view much as in a plan.

No. 2 is a copy made by Miss Murray of the lid of a toilette-box found in a mastaba. It is made of a veneer (? on wood) of ivory, and blue and black slips of glazed ware.

Nos. 3-9 are ivory fragments of another box.

Pl. IX.—Copies of water-colour sketches of a stairway tomb, both taken from below (by Miss Murray from Miss Pirie’s sketches).

33. Pl. X.—Stone vessels. 1-5 are of alabaster, and, with 6, come from the sunk arches, believed to be of the earlier XIIth dynasty, i.e., some time between the Old Kingdom and the reign of Usertesen II; 7-12 are of the later XIIth dynasty; Nos. 7, 8 and 10 are the common ones, the shape 7, when in stone, being, of course, not decorated. The vertical alabasters of the XIIth dynasty are very similar to some (as 23) of the earlier periods, but a slight swell near the mouth (seen well in 47) and a greater spreading at the foot (as in 23, 25) seem to me often to distinguish the early forms. The shapes from 15 onwards belong to the Neolithic and Old Kingdom graves, but 14 was in a XIIth dynasty grave (36); 15 is from a small stairway tomb, 26 also. All the shapes are of alabaster, unless otherwise marked. A rough example of No. 44 was found at Ballas, used anciently as a lamp with floating wick.

34. Pl. XI gives the distinctly Neolithic forms of pottery. Nos. 1, 2, 4, 12, 16, 18 are of coarse brown ware, 5-9, with 11, 13, 14, good drab. No. 10 is a red pebble-polished ware, 15 is a dark red. Nos. 17 and 18 were found in a mastaba with Old Kingdom pots, and are probably also of that period. No. 13 is the important type of hard brick-red pot which was found in Ka-mena’s tomb.

Pl. XII.—The upper half of the plate (20-46 and 50) gives the forms of the very coarse pottery found in great quantities above and in the mastabas, and also near the temple of Amenhotep III on the desert. Most were well known before, but 26 and 32 are new. The common forms are 21, 22, 23, 32, 31, 34. No. 47 is the pot from Ka-mena’s tomb, much like a Neolithic form. Nos. 48, 49, 51, 55, and the three sharp-edged bowls, are of a good ware, washed with haematite. The two little pots 56 (from mastaba C, Pl. XXIII) are unlike any others of this period—pink inside, yellow out, with decoration in black line.

35. Pl. XIII.—Nos. 1-28 are the types found in the sunk arch tombs inside the walls, and are believed to be later than the Old Kingdom pottery of the last plate, but earlier than that of the plates which follow. Most of these pots are of a rather hard light red ware, and can be distinguished by their material alone from most of the XIIth dynasty pottery found outside the walls. But the forms 8-16 are of a soft brown ware, and are very thick and heavy. All these pots are wheel-made, but scraped over by hand in the lower half. The forms from 28a to 35 are XVIIIth and XIXth dynasty, from secondary burials in the Middle Kingdom cemetery.

Pl. XIV.—All but No. 3 are water-jars, 5, 6, 7, and 8 being the common forms. No. 4, with the four ears, is in a fine hard drab ware, and No. 1 is painted, but the rest, which were by far the commonest forms, are of a rather coarse, soft pottery, varying in colour from dull brown to pink; the brown ware is the softest and most liable to flaking. In the last two can be seen the marks of the string by which they were held together before being baked.

Pl. XV continues the catalogue of XIIth dynasty pottery. Down the centre are two large stands and a large bowl, each drawn from one example, all of a hard, drab, polished ware. The bowls 11-14 and 16, in a light-red, rather soft material, were common forms. The hemispherical cup (18, 22) is still commoner, and was known from two XIIth dynasty sites before. The dish in a soft red ware (21) was very common, occurring in nearly every tomb. The cup and stand combined (33, 34, 35) shows that the bowls in the upper part of this plate (11, etc.) were generally placed upon the ring-stands (38-46). The compound form is made in a weak material, and is seldom found unbroken. The ring-stands are generally of red ware, more rarely (as 38) of the better drab ware.

Pl. XVI.—The bottle shapes at the top are generally in red clay, but 47 and 62 are of hard drab ware.

No. 57 may be noticed as being like a Neolithic form, with a common Neolithic mark. The small forms, 63, 64, 67, and 68, are often found together. When a tomb contains one of these small varieties, it generally contains a great many. They perhaps mark some definite period.

No. 60 is an ordinary water-jar. Nos. 58, 70, 71, 72 are the rare drab jars, of which less than a dozen occurred in a hundred graves.

Pl. XVII.—Common forms are 76, 77, 79, 84, 86. Some of the shapes, as 116, 131, also occur as the early XIIth dynasty pottery inside the wall.

36. Pl. XVIII contains the marks made while yet soft upon coarse pots found in stairway tombs, mastabas, etc. Marks recur (as 7 and 9, 40 and 41) in different tombs. Hieroglyphs are not common, but occur (25, 46).

The name No. 44 occurs on a majūr, and confirms slightly the early date given for those pots. Below are inscribed fragments of limestone, 49-53 and 55, from Ka-mena’s mastaba, 54 from a neighbouring one. Nos. 56-65 are the copper models of tools from Ka-mena’s tomb.

Pl. XIX gives the marks from XIIth dynasty pots, chiefly made after baking, and therefore presumably due to the owners and not the potters. Similar signs sometimes recur in different tombs (44 and 48, 45 and 46, 37 and 38, 29 and 30, 32 and 33). Can they be notes of the contents of the jars?

37. Pl. XX.—No. 1 is a piece of a bowl of incised ware found in a stairway tomb.

Nos. 2, 3 and 4 are also fragments of an incised ware found in some irregular holes on the north side of the hill of Paheri, and not before mentioned. With them were a few very late blue glaze beads, and two pots that were probably Roman, but these three fragments are evidently much older.

No. 5 is the outline of a majūr, the large pot used as a coffin in the Old Kingdom.

No. 6 is a fragment of Neolithic pottery from one of the small graves inside the town (cf. Naqada, XXXV, 74).

Nos. 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 are from intrusive burials in the XIIth dynasty cemetery. No. 13, perhaps Roman, has a certain importance in the question of the date of the great wall (cf. § 27).

No. 14 is one of the pots from the pigeon-house in the south of the town (Pl. XXIV).

After the scarabs come six cylinders.

No. 28, in black stone, perhaps Men-kau-ra, but from the XIIth dynasty cemetery.

No. 29, in green steatite, from a stairway tomb.

No. 30, probably copper, not bronze, found with a majūr burial.

Nos. 31 and 33, black stone and ivory respectively, from another Old Kingdom well.

No. 32, a well-known type of black stone cylinder, found in a mastaba with a scrap of diorite, on which the name of Sneferu was scratched.

38. Pl. XXI gives the objects from the different foundation deposits. The first sixteen are from the small temple of Thothmes III. Nos. 1, 2 and 4 are of blue glaze. The spiral mark on the bead is noteworthy; it is common in the XIIth dynasty, and is also known in the XVIIIth at Deir-el-Bahri. Nos. 3 and 8 are sandstone corn-rubbers, with inscriptions in blue paint; 5 and 9 are alabaster models of the head of a fire-drill (?) and of a double shell. The inscriptions are all the same: “The good god, Menkheper-ra, beloved of Nekheb.” No. 10 is a little wooden girdle-tie; 6, 7 and 11 are bronze tools. The five pots below are on a smaller scale.

Nos. 17 to 24 are the pots from the deposits of Amenhotep II, found under the great temple inside El Kab.

From No. 25 onwards all are from the later deposits (Pl. I, 8 N), also under the great temple. Of green glaze are Nos. 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 38, 39 and 48; of bronze are Nos. 31, 33, 34, 35, 32; of clay, 41 and 47. No. 42 is of bone, No. 37 of calcite, Nos. 36 and 39 of red glass. Nos. 43 and 44 (scale ⅙) are the typical shapes of pottery. Nos. 45 and 46 show the coarse sandstone mortars found in these deposits.

39. Pl. XXII is a plan of the XIIth dynasty tombs found outside the east wall of the temple.

Pl. XXIII gives the large group of mastabas found under the heap of sand north of the town wall.

Pl. XXIV shows a group of buildings in the southern half of the town enclosure, mastabas, small open graves of the Libyan period, and arched graves of the XIIth dynasty.

Pl. XXV gives drawings of a stone gateway in the great wall, under which a vain search was made for foundation deposits.

Pl. XXVI gives the plan of the small temple of Thothmes III north of the town, from which the numerous foundation deposits were obtained. The deposits are indicated by circles.

40. Pl. XXVII is a catalogue of the small Libyan tombs showing the groups of alabaster and pottery vessels that are commonly grouped together.