CHAPTER VIII.ILLAHUN.1889-90.

65.Flint Knife.

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

66.Pedestals of Biahmu.

67.Wall of Court.

of inscription of Amenemhat III. It was evident that the two great piles of stone had been the pedestals of colossal seated monolithic statues, carved in hard quartzite sandstone, and brilliantly polished. These statues faced northward, and around each was a court-yard wall with sloping outer face, and red granitegateway in the north front. The total height of the colossi was about sixty feet from the ground. The limestone pedestal rose twenty-one feet, then the sandstone colossus had a base of four feet, on which the figure, seated on its throne, rose to a height of thirty-five feet more. Thus the whole statue and part of its pedestal would be visible above the enclosing court-yard wall, and it would appear from a distance as if it were placed on a truncated pyramid. The description of Herodotos, therefore, is fully accounted for; and it shows that he actually saw the figures, though from a distance, as any person who visited them closely would not have described them in such a manner.

68.Section of Court, with Statue.

Having by this time formed and organised a good body of workmen, 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, andits 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. This work was very troublesome, as the large bricks were laid in sand, and rather widely spaced; hence as soon as any were removed, the sand was liable to pour out of the joints, and to loosen all the surrounding parts. The removal of each brick was therefore done as quietly as possible, and I had to go in three times a day and insert more roofing boards, a matter which needed far more skill and care than a native workman would use. 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 the four sides for the entrance, the masons attacked the sloping stone 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, and 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 entrance 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 many parts the only way along them was by lying flat, and sliding along the mud, pushed by fingers and toes. In this way, sliding, crawling, and wading, I reached as near to the outer mouth of the passage as possible; and then by measuring back to the chamber, the position of the mouth on the outside of the pyramid was pretty nearly found. But so deep was it under the rubbish, and so much encumbered with large blocks of stone, that it took about a fortnight to reach it from the outside.

The pyramid had been elaborately arranged so as to deceive and weary the spoiler, and it had apparently occupied a great amount of labour to force an entrance. The mouth was on the ground level, on the south side,

69.Plan of Pyramid.

a quarter of the length from the south-west corner. The original explorers descended a passage 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 solid with stone; this they thought would lead to theprize, 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 a passage led west to a chamber with two wells, which seemed as if they led to the 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 glassy-hard sandstone roofing block, and thus reaching the 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, and 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 (as it was out of arms’ reach under water), and after searching them they threw them into the sarcophagi. Thus we anxiously worked on for any inscribed fragments; my anxiety being for the cartouche of the king, the boys’ anxiety for the big bakhshish promised, atperhieroglyph found, extra value given for cartouches. The system worked, for in the first day I got the coveted

70.Inscription of Amenemhat III.

71.Altar of Neferu-ptah.

prize, a piece of an alabaster vessel with the name of Amenemhat III, proving finally to whom the pyramid belonged; and other parts of inscribed vessels were found. 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, over a hundred in all, and dedicated for the king’s daughter, Neferu-ptah; near it were parts of several bowls in the form of half a trussed duck, also bearing her name: so doubtless the second interment was hers; and she must have died during her father’s life, and before the closing of the pyramid. 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. The chamber itself is a marvellous work; nearly the whole height of it is carved out of a single block of hard quartzite sandstone, forming a huge tank, in which the sarcophagus was placed. In the inside it is twenty-two feet long and nearly eight feet wide, while the sides are about three feet thick. 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 course it 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, butnothing further was found there. No trace of inscription exists on either 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 been generally 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 village, 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 fragments was a uniform smooth bed ofbetonor plaster, on which the pavement of the building had been laid: while on the south side, where the canal had cut across the site, it could be seen 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 within the 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 cemetery 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 re-used for the nineteenth dynasty, the Ptolemaic times, and crocodile burial of the Roman age. But some slabs from the stone chapels on the surface had fallen down the tomb shafts, and were thus preserved.

The oldest unravaged tomb was of about the end of the twenty-sixth 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 woodwork and 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 around it, filling up the whole chamber, so that its very existence was hardly to be suspected by any one in the large chamber. To clearthis 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, forty 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, two hundred in all, of the finest workmanship; and, before long, on the other side of the sarcophagus, two hundred more were found in a similar recess. But the sarcophagus itself was most difficult to open. The lid block was nearly two 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 proved 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 under side 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 I 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 solow in the water as to be out of arms’ reach. The need of doing everything by 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, handling him with the same loving care as Izaak his worms. 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 the finger which bore his name and titles, the exquisitely inlaid gold birds, the chased gold figures, 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 wererecorded, 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, some of them as fine a series as any known before, but not to compare for a moment with those of the walled-in patriarch.

72.Vulture and Cow, from Coffin Lid.

Of rather later age, perhaps Ptolemaic, was a large wooden coffin that we found; the body and the 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 outside, top and bottom, and every part of it finely painted and inscribed. The top of the lid had the deities of the district, thehawk, 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 the two crocodile-headed Sebeks and the ape; and underneath the lower part, or body, was a long inscription, partly biographical. I had a terrifying experience with this coffin; when I found it much of the stucco was loose, and any amount of trouble was worth while to preserve so beautiful and important an object. I observed in copying it that parts had been waxed, to heighten the colour, and this suggested to me to fasten down the stucco by wax. I tried melting it on with a plate of hot iron, but could scarcely do it without blackening it with smoke. In course of this I poured a layer of wax over the surface; but what was my horror to see as the wax cooled that it contracted into saucer-formed patches, lifting up with it the stucco, and leaving bare wood beneath! To touch these wax patches must irrevocably ruin all hopes of replacing the stucco; so I covered it with sheets of paper, and thought on it for some days, a spectre of dismal failure. I tried in vain to buy a brazier at Medinet; so at last, making a grating of wire, I filled it with red-hot charcoal, and supported it over part of the unlucky coffin. As I watched it, the wax softened, flattened, and dropped exactly into place again; patch after patch settled down, the wax melted and ran in under the stucco; and at last I saw the whole surface completely relaid, and fixed so firmly that even the fearful rattle of an Egyptian railway wagon, in the long journey to Bulak, did not injure it.

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 over its 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 on to 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 this 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 distinct 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 mythologic 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,

73.Four Stages of Mummy Decoration.

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 their 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, after such 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, an expression about the better examples which can only be the relic of a magnificent school, whose traditions and skill were not then quite lost. A few indeed of these heads are of such power and subtlety that they may stand beside the works of any age without being degraded. If such was Greek painting still, centuries after its zenith, by obscure commercial artists, and in a distant town of a foreign land, we may dimly credit what it may have been in its grandeur. The National Gallery now begins its history of paintings far before that of any other collection; the finest examples left, after the selection of the Bulak Museum, being now at Trafalgar Square.

The technical methods of these paintings have beenmuch 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 thin cedar panel, on which a coat of lead colour priming was laid, followed by a flesh-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. In some portraits the boldness of the work is almost like some modern romanticist’s; at a foot distance the surface is nearly incomprehensible, at six or eight feet it produces a perfect effect.

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. The wire-grating was filled with red-hot charcoal, and then the frail portrait was slid in beneath it, a few drops of melted wax laid on it, and watched. In a few seconds the fresh wax began to spread, and then at once I ladled melted wax all over the surface; a second too long, and it began to fry and to blister; too sharp a tilt to drain it when it came out, and the new wax washed away the paint. But 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 the 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.

74.Cut-glass Vase.

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. The 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. The toys were also buried with the children, and dolls, with all their furniture,—bedstead, mirror, table, toilet-box, clothes-basket, and other paraphernalia—were placed with the little ones who had died. Even more elaborate toys were laid here, such as the curiousterra cottaof a sedan chair, borne by two porters,with a lady seated inside; a loose figure that can be removed.

75.Side of Ivory Casket.1: 4.

76.Sedan Chair, Terra Cotta.1: 4.

In one instance a far more valuable prize accompanied a body; under the head of a lady lay a papyrusroll, which still preserved a large part of the second book of the Iliad, beautifully written, and with marginal notes. 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, and wrapped in several old cloths.

77. 1:6.Roman Rag Dolls.1: 4.

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 theflowers being as complete as if dried for a herbarium. They illustrate the accounts of Pliny and other writers about ancient wreaths, and the plants used for them, and show what a careful and precise trade the wreath-maker’s was. 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, under the careful examination given by Mr. Newberry to the boxes full of plants which I brought away.

Few places, then, have such varied interest as Hawara; the twelfth dynasty pyramid, 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 of the Fayum, 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 even ornament, which would tell 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 now is; 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 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

78.Building North of Birket Kerun.

79.Interior of Building.

side opposite the entrance. These recesses have had doors, of which the pivot holes can be seen. Thereare no traces of statues or of sarcophagi about; and the place has been keenly tunnelled and explored by treasure-seekers.

80.Toy Bird on Wheels, Hawara.

81.Pyramid of Illahun.

Havingfinished 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 an hypothesis, and therefore 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, andthe core had been made up by layers 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 Usertesen II, as we shall notice presently. Amongst other work, I searched along a ledge in the rock at the base, where the pavement had originally been placed. While doing this we found a well, which I did not clear, as I was near the end of my season for work; but, on Mr. Fraser coming to secure the place during my absence, I commended this well to his notice as a possible entrance. He cleared it out, and at forty feet deep found a passage leading up into the pyramid. Then it was evident that no other external sign on the pyramid itself was possible, for the passages and chambers were wholly cut in the rock, and the pyramid merely stood on the surface, without any connection with the sepulchre beneath it.

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 workmen 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 in my digging. Had it not been for this smaller well, I believe the pyramid would have been still inviolate.

The passage in the inside is rough hewn in the softrock, 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. At the end it opened into a chamber lined with blocks of limestone, of which a 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. And its errors of work in flatness and regularity are not more than the thickness of a visiting card. Its accuracy of proportion is also fine, as each dimension is a whole number of palms, with a fluctuation of only one part in a thousand. In front of the sarcophagus stood the alabaster table of offerings, for thekaof Usertesen II, now in the Gizeh Museum. Strange to say, there is not a trace of a coffin, or a lid to the sarcophagus; and, indeed, as this chamber is not under the middle of the pyramid, it may be questioned whether the real interment is not yet to be reached by some other passage.

From the north wall of this chamber a strange passage is cut in the rock, first northwards, then west, then south, then east, and lastly northwards again,opening into the limestone chamber; in fact, it passes around the granite chamber. It was not a workman’s passage intended to be closed up again, as the doorway of it has a bevelled edge and is curved at the top. It rather looks as if intended to prove to any spoilers that there was no other concealed passage leading out from the granite chamber, and thus to check their destructive searchings. If so, we may be tolerably certain that there is some other chamber containing the real interment.

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 the tables and lists of offerings for thekaof Usertesen II. The sculptures were of beautiful work, and brilliantly coloured. What process was used for fixing these coats of colour we do not know; but still, from over four thousand years, after being broken and thrown into heaps, these colours are firmly fixed on the stone, and soaking and washing make no change in them. Only one large piece was found, now in the Gizeh Museum, but hundreds of portions of hieroglyphs were recovered among the chips. Who the destroyers were we can guess by an inscription of Ramessu II, rudely painted on a block of the stone. Among the ruins some chips of a black-granite seated statue of Usertesen II, were found, showing that the shrine was furnished like the earlier temples of the fourth dynasty.

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 thesame hands, as two cartouches of Ramessu II were found on the blocks; several beads, &c., of the nineteenth dynasty occur in the ruins; and I found the name of Usertesen II on a piece of a granite pillar of Ramessu II at Ahnas, some miles to the south, showing for 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 brickwork externally, lined with limestone masonry. But of the internal arrangement not a trace can be recovered. Probably a shrine of granite stood at the west end of the court, and objects of sandstone in the area, judging by the position of the chips. Also a large basalt statue existed here, of which only one fragment was found; the statue must therefore have been removed (probably to Ahnas), and not broken up here. One interesting discovery was made, however. In the middle of the area I noticed a slight hollow in the rock surface, about two and a half feet square. I thought of a foundation deposit, and examined this place. A block of stone lay fitted into it; on breaking and raising this, a second block was seen; when that was removed, we found plain sand. Scraping this out, we came on much broken pottery, and then some bronze models of tools, and a large number of carnelian beads. There were four sets of objects, thrown in pell mell; but the strings of carnelian beads, all exactly alike, are a puzzle. Is it possible that they were bead-money? They have the requisites of an exchange standard, as well as gold; they need a regular amount of labour to producethem, they are unalterable, and they serve for ornament when not used for exchange. However that may be, we have here far the oldest foundation-deposit known.

82.Foundation Deposit.1: 4.

The great prize of Illahun was unknown and unsuspected by any one. 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 as yet 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 I 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 into the street; then the chambers beyond those were emptied into them; and so line after line, block after block, almost every room in the town was emptied out and searched. The only part not quite cleared was where habitations 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.

83.North side of Kahun, showing Line of Town Wall.

The general outline was a square mass; walled on

84.Steps to Upper Buildings on Hill.

the west, north, 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 by a 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. These columns were sometimes of stone, sometimes of wood; with a simple abacus, or with a carved palm capital; octagonal, or fluted, or ribbed; butthey always had large circular stone bases, which mostly remain in place in the rooms. The roofing was usually of beams, overlaid with bundles of straw, and mud-plastered; but many arched roofs of brickwork remain, some entire, others with only the lower part. The doorways were always arched in brickwork, and we know now for certain that the arch was not only known, but was in constant use by the early Egyptians.

85.Basket with Tools.1: 7.

In the rooms pottery was often found; and many parts 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; in such places there might be even six or eight feet depth of broken pottery, woodwork and other things. Tools

86.Castanets and Figure of Dancer.

were also found hidden in the dust which had lain in the chambers; and one basket was found with a lid, marvellously fresh and firm, containing copper hatchets and chisels, and a copper bowl, all as free from rust as when they were buried. Beneath the brick floors of the rooms was, however, the best place to search; not only for hidden things, such as a statuette of a dancer and pair of ivory castanets, but also for numerous burials of babies in wooden boxes. These boxes had been made for clothes and household use, but were used to bury infants, often accompanied by necklaces and other things. On the necklaces were sometimes cylinders with the kings’ names; and thus we know forcertain that these burials, and the inhabitation of the town, is of the twelfth dynasty, from Usertesen II onward. Lying on one box was a splendid ivory carving of a baboon seated, of the most naturalistic work, comparable with the best cinquecento Italian ivories. This of course is kept at the Gizeh Museum. In the houses but little sculpture was found; far the finest piece being a basalt statue of an official, now also at the Gizeh Museum.

87.Ivory Baboon.

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, a mirror of copper (Group 92), fishing nets, and many wooden tools, hoes, rakes, a brick-mould, plasterers’ floats, mallets, copper chisels set in wooden handles, &c. Also games (Group 93) as whip-tops, tip-cats, draught-boards, dolls, and a beautifully woven sling. Many pieces of furniture 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 being found. Hitherto we had never known how the Egyptians obtained fire, as there is no sign of this on the sculptures, nor do they seem to haveattached any significance to fire-making. In this town I found several sticks with the burnt holes made by drilling fire, as many races do at present: the Egyptians probably did this with the bow-drill, with which they were so familiar, and of which specimens were found here.

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