THE more one sees of "The Land of Khemi," the more one is amazed at the extent of the remains which still exist awaiting a thorough examination, and which lie so temptingly strewn over the face of the country that it is almost an insult to them to leave them still unexplored. The mounds and cliffs seem to be crying out "Come and dig, we contain all the records of the ages, we only conceal the pages of ancient history which are still dark, because no one will take the trouble to turn us over; we can reveal the secrets of the little known period when the Shepherd-kings reigned over the land; we can throw light upon the obscure annals of the pontifical monarchs of the twentyfirst dynasty; we can tell all about the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth dynasties, of which no record whatever has yet been found upon any of the monuments; under these superincumbent masses of brickbats and potsherds, in rock-cut tombs and undiscovered mastabas, it is all written in imperishable letters, only come and dig." It would be doing a gross injustice to the distinguished body of Egyptologists, from Champollion down to Mariette and Brugsh Pashas, to say that this appeal has not been responded to, and that in the great works at Sakkara, and the excavations which have taken place, a wonderful effort has not been made; but what strikes one is, that the task is so vast and endless-that in spite of all the time and money that have been already spent, so much remains to be done. In fact one does not know which is most wonderful, what has been achieved, or what yet remains to be accomplished. The ordinary

tourist who visits the Boulak Museum and the Necropolis of Sakkara, and then runs up to the First or Second Cataracts, is apt to think that the subject must be wellnigh exhausted; and is scarcely conscious of the fact that the banks of the Nile from Cairo to Thebes, between which he glides so rapidly in a Cook's steamer, or, more tranquilly, journeys in a dahabeeya, are strewn with the mounds of ancient cities, especially on the eastern shore, and that its cliffs are honeycombed with tombs. It was the knowledge of this fact which tempted us, in the most humble and unassuming manner, and without any pretensions to a knowledge of the subject, to try and see whether we could not discover something in a very small way, by poking about in a leisurely manner, from various centres on the banks of the river, where we were kindly provided with accommodation. Indeed, so far as our experience went, the hospitality of the Government was only equalled by that of private friends. To one of these, learned in the lore of the ancient Egyptians, we were indebted for our first attempt, and in fact for the encouragement of any latent tendency we possessed towards researches, which, when once the taste for them is fully developed, becomes one of the most absorbing and interesting of pursuits.

About a hundred miles up the Nile from Cairo, the limestone cliffs of the Jebel Ther on the east bank are cleft by a gorge at a spot known to the natives as Haybee, near which there is a small hamlet of hovels, a grove of young date-trees, and the remains of a very ancient pier, which, in the days when there was

an important town and fortress at the mouth of the gorge, projected into the river. Near the stones that still mark its site we moored our bark, which was nothing more or less than a common village boat, in which we had crossed from the opposite bank in company with our erudite friend on archæological researches bent. We had given notice of our projected visit the day before, and the sheikh of the neighbouring village, with a dozen or more of its male inhabitants, was on the bank awaiting our arrival. As soon as we got through the dategrove we came upon the mounds of an ancient town, whose name, as found in the hieroglyphics, was Isembheb. Scrambling over these, with eyes eagerly scanning the débris for coins, heads, and other relics, we followed our guides to a projecting shoulder of the cliff, beyond which they said there was a cave; but we had no sooner reached the brow, than we were arrested by the remarkable view which burst upon us. The gorge had widened into an amphitheatre surrounded by limestone cliffs, which bore the marks of having been extensively quarried both in modern and ancient times, the trenches and cuttings increasing the quaint picturesqueness of the natural formation. Immediately to our left, and rising out of the mound on which we

stood, was a cliff, partly faced and partly crowned with brick to a height of fifty feet, and about a hundred yards broad, the massive construction of crude brick presenting quite an imposing appearance. In other directions there were fragments of similar buildings and walls, the whole suggesting the idea that in former years a fortress of considerable dimensions had been erected here to guard the entrance of the pass to the river. From the heights on which we stood, the view of these masses of masonry

He

crowning the mounds and cliffs, together with the quarried precipices and the sharp outline of the ranges of desert mountain beyond, with the placid Nile, lined with palm-groves, sweeping beneath us, was striking in the extreme. When we had feasted our eyes upon it we descended to the cave, the entrance to which we were disappointed to find was so choked with sand that it was with the greatest difficulty one of the Arabs squeezed himself into the bowels of the earth, where he stood every chance of being suffocated. On these occasions they always go in feet first, not merely in order to get as much air as possible, but because the passages are often so narrow and choked as to prevent their turning round. came to the surface in a few moments, saying that the passage was blocked; so we sent to the village for some mattocks, and went meanwhile to examine another cave. The entrance to this was a little larger, but it presented more difficulties of excavation on account of the masses of rock by which it was encased. I managed to crawl in a short distance, feet first, but all progress was almost immediately blocked by a number of sarcophagi piled one upon the other. The lid of one was broken, and I poked my foot into it in the dark. There was something so very "uncanny" in the soft feeling of the mummy against it, that I drew it back with great alacrity. It was impossible to get the mummy out without a great expenditure of time and labour, as though the crack in the lid was big enough to allow of my foot passing in, the mummy could only have been got out piecemeal. Moreover, there is no particular interest attaching to fragments of a mummy. There were possibly ornaments in the sarcophagus, but its position. made it impossible to grub into its interior; so we abandoned it for

the present, lest by spending too much time over it we might lose something that was more interesting, and proceeded to a third cave which was nearer the bank of the river. The entrance to this was by a square hole in the face of the cliff, about five feet from its base. We put two Arabs in, very much as one would put ferrets into a rabbit-hole; and as they stayed in nearly half an hour we began to get alarmed, although they had lights. Finally they reappeared, thoroughly exhausted. They reported that after squeezing along a narrow passage for about a hundred feet, they came to four chambers, opening into one another, but containing no sarcophagi. From these they ascended about ten feet by a perpendicular shaft, into a number of small chambers,-they could not tell how many on account of the bats, which they averred were so numerous as to prevent their making any observations. Of course, all inquiry as to whether there were hieroglyphics on the walls was comparatively useless, as their accuracy could not be relied upon; but they declared most positively that there were none. Their account was, however, sufficiently interesting to tempt my friend to try his luck. I was unfortunately not strong enough to attempt the scramble.

He soon

reappeared, in a half-stifled condition, saying that he had been obliged to come back for want of air, and on account of the extreme narrowness of the passage, in which he was afraid of sticking permanently. Our exertions, though they had not so far been attended with any great success, had given us an appetite, so we adjourned to the date-grove for luncheon, sending the Arabs in search of bricks, if there were any stamped with hieroglyphics. In a short time they brought us several fragments, but

my learned friend could make nothing of them, they were so imperfect.

It was not until we reached the spot from which they had been taken that, by piecing the most perfect fragments together, and comparing several, he deciphered their meaning. The inscription read as follows:

"Nouter-hon atep en Ammon

Pinedjem, pet our Khent Isis;" which, being interpreted, signifies "Grand Priest of Ammon Pinedjem, Protector of the Grand Sanctuary of Isis." The bricks on which this inscription was stamped were about fifteen inches by nine, and the presumption is that this wall formed part of a temple dedicated to Isis, which was built by the pontiffking Pinedjem, the third of the twenty-first dynasty, who reigned about 1043 B.C.; and this hypothesis is borne out by the fact that the signification of the ancient Egyptian name of the town, Isembheb, is "the Isis of Heb," thus indicating that the locality was one sacred to the goddess, and adorned doubtless by a temple which had been erected in her honour by the priest-king Pinedjem. The history of the dynasty to which these kings belonged is so obscure that it would be most interesting if further light could be thrown upon it; and it is probable that these ruins conceal records which would be of great historical value. It would appear from what we do know, that during the dynasty of the Rameses they exercised supreme spiritual functions at Tanis, the Zoan of the Bible, in Lower Egypt, and at Thebes; and that when, owing to the weakness of the sixteenth and last Rameses, the high priest Herhor, then chief prophet of Ammon, succeeded in overthrowing this dynasty, he established himself upon the throne of Egypt, and fixed the seat of government at Tanis; but the high

priests of Thebes, in order to retain the spiritual supremacy of that ancient city, started a contemporaneous line, so that for some time Upper and Lower Egypt were governed independently of each other. Lepsius gives only three Tanite sovereigns and seven Theban, from which it would appear that a union must have taken place under the latter, who, however, seem to have reigned somewhat ingloriously. The most vigorous of them appear to have been Piankh and Pinedjem, who was possibly the Pharaoh with whom Solomon "made affinity" by marriage; "for Pharaoh king of Egypt had gone up and taken Gezer, and burnt it with fire, and slain the Canaanites that dwelt in the city, and given it for a present unto his daughter, Solomon's wife." And we read further that Solomon built a house especially for her, because she seems to have retained the religion of her royal father, the high priest of Ammon; therefore "Solomon brought up daughter of Pharaoh out of the city of David unto the house he had built for her: for he said, My wife shall not dwell in the house of David king of Israel, because the places are holy whereunto the ark of the Lord hath come." It seems odd that it should not have struck Solomon that if his wife was too unholy even to live in a sacred city, she was too unholy to be his wife; meantime his father-in-law, who, if he was not Pinedjem, was undoubtedly one of the priest-kings of Ammon, was celebrating mysterious rites, possibly in this very temple of Isis whose ruined walls we were now identifying. Nor did these religious scruples interfere with intimate relations being kept up between Egypt and Palestine during the reign of Solomon and these pontiff kings, for we hear that

the

"Solomon had horses brought out of Egypt and linen yarn: the king's merchants received the linen yarn at a price. And a chariot came up and went out of Egypt for six hundred shekels of silver, and an horse for an hundred and fifty." These commercial relations came to an end when Egypt was invaded by the Assyrians under Sheshong the First, and the dynasty of the Ammon monarchs was overthrown. This king is the Sesonchis of the Greeks, and the Shishak of the Bible, with whom Jeroboam took refuge when he fled from Rehoboam, and who afterwards " came up against Jerusalem, and took away the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king's house; he took all he carried away also the shields of gold which Solomon had made." An inscription on one of the walls of the great hall at Karnak commemorates this campaign against Judah, and gives a list of the conquered towns and districts.

It is worthy of note that the modern name of bricks formed of clay, and not requiring straw, should be haybee, as we found no straw in the bricks of these ruins, which now bear the same name, though in some of the walls which formed its fortifications are layers of reeds in every fourth course, to serve as binders. The bricks on which we found the inscription of prophet of Pinedjem were burnt; so that Sir Gardner Wilkinson is mistaken when he says "that burnt bricks were not used in Egypt, and when found they are known to be of Roman time."* The rest of his notice on Egyptian brick-work, however, applies so accurately to the haybee-which, with the exception of those stamped, were all crudethat it is worth quoting.

"Enclosures of gardens or granaries, sacred circuits surrounding the

courts of temples, walls of fortresses or towns, dwelling-houses and tombs, and even some few of the temples themselves, were of crude brick, with stout columns and gateways; and so great was the demand, that the Government, foreseeing the profit to be obtained from a monopoly of them, undertook to supply the public at a moderate price, thus preventing all unauthorised persons from engaging

in their manufacture. And in order more effectually to obtain this end, the seal of the king, or of some privileged person, was stamped upon the bricks at the time they were made; and bricks so marked are found both in public and private buildings, some having the ovals of a king, and some the names and titles of a priest, or other influential person. Those which

bear no characters either form part of a tale, of which the first only were stamped, or were from the brick-fields

of individuals who had obtained a licence from the Government to make them for their own consumption."

It is not unlikely that if excavations were prosecuted at Haybee some interesting discoveries might be made, and light thrown upon the legends concerning the pontiff kings of whose dynasties so little is known. I believe that Brugsch Pasha has visited the ruins, and found a brick or tablet of Thotmes the Third. There are also some figures in the Museum at Cairo, which have been sent from Haybee; but they are not the result of organized examination, but of quarrying operations, undertaken for the construction of the sugar factories on the other side of the river. When we got back to the first tomb we had visited, where we had set a couple of men to dig, we found that they had reached some sarcophagi; but they were too tightly wedged in, and our time was too limited, to render it possible to get at their contents. We afterwards found some mortuary chambers hewn in the rock; and upon the lintel over the entrance of one there was an

inscription, but it was too much defaced to be deciphered.

The sun was now sinking behind the Libyan hills, and we reluctantly wended our way to the river-bank, accompanied by a large retinue of native followers. It was our first experience of research of this description, and we had just done enough of it to whet our appetites, and to convince us that the field of

archæological exploration is far from exhausted, and that the Egyptologist may yet look forward to winning laurels in it. For ourselves, we proposed to go higher up the river, in the hope of finding some spot which might offer attractions of the same description.

With this object principally in view, we fixed our headquarters at Minieh, a town of some importance about 160 miles up the river from Cairo, whose white houses and relatively imposing appearance are familiar to dahabeeya travellers and Cook's tourists. Our abode was on the bank of the river, and the arrival of a Cook's steamer, with its passengers streaming on shore for an hour, and then posting off not much wiser than when they came, was an event which reminded us from time to time that we were within the pale of modern civilisation. Minieh is a town of about 20,000 inhabitants, the capital of the province, and residence of the mudir, and of the principal superintendent of the Daira Sanieh for Upper Egypt. The only foreigners resident here are two or three French employees connected with the large sugar-factory which stands near the palace of the Khedive on the banks of the river. To the south of the town are the beautiful and extensive gardens, belonging principally to Sultan Pasha, the largest landholder and most influential man in the province, whose palace by the water-side is quite an imposing feature; while the elabo