wood, sixty cubits long and thirty cubits
broad; they were put together in seventeen days in the third month
(May-June) of the Summer Season. Behold, though there was no water in
the basins (?) it arrived at the pyramid Khanefer Merenra in peace. I
performed the work throughout in accordance with the order which the
Majesty of my Lord had given to me. His Majesty sent me to excavate five
canals in the South, and to make three lighters, and four barges of the
acacia wood of Uauat. Behold, the governors of Arthet, Uauat, and Matcha
brought the wood for them, and I finished the whole of the work in one
year. [When] they were floated they were loaded with huge slabs of
granite for the pyramid Khanefer Merenra; moreover, all of them were
passed through these five canals ... because I ascribed more majesty,
and praise (?), and worship to the Souls of the King of the South and
North, Merenra, the ever living, than to any of the gods.... I carried
out everything according to the order which his divine Ka gave me.

"I was a person who was beloved by his father, and praised by his
mother, and gracious to his brethren, I the Duke, a real Governor[1] of
the South, the vassal of Osiris, Una."

[Footnote 1: _i.e._ his title was not honorary.]

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HERKHUF

This inscription is cut in hieroglyphs upon a slab of stone, which was
originally in the tomb of Herkhuf at Aswan, and is now in the Egyptian
Museum in Cairo and upon parts of the walls of his tomb. Herkhuf was a
Duke, a _smer uat_, a Kher-heb priest, a judge belonging to Nekhen, the
Lord of Nekheb, a bearer of the royal seal, the shekh of the caravans,
and an administrator of very high rank in the South. All these titles,
and the following lines, together with prayers for offerings, are cut
above the door of his tomb. He says:

"I came this day from my town. I descended from my nome. I builded a
house and set up doors. I dug a lake and I planted sycamore trees. The
King praised me. My father made a will in my favour. I am perfect.... [I
am a person] who is beloved by his father, praised by his mother, whom
all his brethren loved. I gave bread to the hungry man, raiment to the
naked, and him who had no boat I ferried over the river. O ye living men
and women who are on the earth, who shall pass by this tomb in sailing
down or up the river, and who shall say, 'A thousand bread-cakes and a
thousand vessels of beer to the lord of this tomb,