es of sandstone hills. An hour's walk up this valley is to
be seen the little square block of Amenhotep III's temple, the great
isolated rock of the graffiti, and, rather nearer, the small temple of
Rameses. The low hill to the left, half a mile away, is the hill of
tombs. The row of black dots sloping downwards to the east are the
doorways of the tombs; they follow the bed of soundest rock. Further
to the north is a rock looking, in the distance, like a huge mushroom.
This is a hill of which there remains only the upper part, resting on
great pillars; the flanks of the hill and all the inside of it except
these pillars have been quarried away, the stone being used probably
for the temples of El Kab. The strip of cultivated land is very narrow
at this part, often less than 500 yards wide.

Immediately to the east of the walls the ground has been disturbed,
being covered with small and equal rises and depressions; scraps of
XIIth dynasty pottery scattered over its surface showed that here was
the cemetery of the Middle Kingdom.

_Note._--I stopped for five hours at Kafr-es-Zaiat on the railway
journey from Alexandria to Cairo to examine a site, which may be the
Serapeum of the Saite nome. On the map, in the Description de l'Egypt,
some ruins are marked as the village of El Naharieh, north of
Kafr-es-Zaiat. I found, on talking with the people, that ruins had
existed there thirty years ago, but that now all the ground they had
covered had been brought into cultivation. Under the mats in the
mosques some blocks of granite of old Egyptian work may be seen, and
I noticed the cartouche of Necho twice. The sheikh of the village
had, too, a fine lintel, used as a gate-post. This he kindly had moved
for me, and on it I saw the name of the Serapeum of the Saite nome,
_Hat-biti_, again with the cartouche of Necho. (_Cf._ de Rouge,
Geographie de la Basse Egypte, p. 22.)

* * * * *

CHAPTER I.

THE EARLIEST TOMBS.

4. The lower parts of the ground inside the enclosure had been very
thoroughly looted, chiefly by the natives of El Kab, when cultivating.
We found many small graves about 6 feet long, 2 feet wide, and waist
deep, but containing no bones, and with so little pottery in them that
it took some time to determine their period. But in the two low mounds
to the north, and the larger one in the south, graves of several kinds
soon appeared. Of these one set were clearly later than t