statues of King Usertsen (Senusret) III, depicting him at different
periods of his life. Pour of the heads are preserved, and, as the
expression of each differs from that of the other, it is quite evident
that some show him as a young, others as an old, man.

[Illustration: 327.jpg GRANITE THRESHOLD AND OCTAGONAL SANDSTONE
PILLARS]

Of The XIth Dynasty Temple At Dee El-Bahari. About 2500 B.C.

The face is of the well-known hard and lined type which is seen also in
the portraits of Amenemhat III, and was formerly considered to be that
of the Hyksos. Messrs. Newberry and Garstang, as we have seen, consider
it to be so, indirectly, as they regard the type as having been
introduced into the XIIth Dynasty by Queen Nefret, the mother of
Usertsen (Sen-usret) III. This queen, they think, _was_ a Hittite
princess, and the Hittites were practically the same thing as the
Hyksos. We have seen, however, that there is very little foundation for
this view, and it is more than probable that this peculiar physiognomy
is of a type purely Egyptian in character.

[Illustration: 328.jpg EXCAVATION OF THE TOMB OF A PRIESTESS,]

On The Platform Of The XIth Dynasty Temple, Der El-Bahari,
1904.

On the platform, around the central pyramid, were buried in small
chamber-tombs a number of priestesses of the goddess Hathor, the
mistress of the desert and special deity of Der el-Bahari. They were
all members of the king's harim, and they bore the title of "King's
Favourite." As told in a previous chapter, all were buried at one
time, before the final completion of the temple, and it is by no means
impossible that they were strangled at the king's death and buried round
him in order that their ghosts might accompany him in the next world,
just as the slaves were buried around the graves (or secondary graves)
of the 1st Dynasty kings at Aby-dos. They themselves, as also already
related, took with them to the next world little waxen figures which
when called upon could by magic be turned into ghostly slaves. These
images were _ushabtiu,_ "answerers," the predecessors of the little
figures of wood, stone, and pottery which are found buried with the
dead in later times. The priestesses themselves were, so to speak, human
_ushabtiu,_ for royal use only, and accompanied the kings to their final
resting-place.

With the priestesses was buried the usual funerary furniture
characteristic of the period. This consisted of little models o