he rest.
Their enclosure walls, within which several burials were found, were
at right angles to the great wall of the town, and cut through the
other graves (mastabas) which, though parallel to one another, were
skew to the town walls. These earlier tombs were of several types: (1)
mastabas with square shafts; (2) mastabas with sloping "stairways,"
both of crude brick; (3) burials in the kind of large earthenware pot
that our workmen call a _maj[=u]r_; and (4) burials of that now
well-known type which has been called New Race, Libyan, Neolithic,
etc., and which is distinguished by the contracted position of the
body with the head to the south, and by a very definite class of
pottery, paint slabs, beads, etc. The mastabas were found both within
and outside of the town walls, one group (PL. XXIII) lying quite close
to them. On three diorite bowls found in these graves (one inside the
walls, the others outside) the name of Sneferu appeared. As this is
the only king's name occurring in any of these tombs, it seems
probable that most of them may belong to the reign of Sneferu, or to
the period immediately following. And the town walls, being built
through the Old Kingdom cemetery, are, of course, the later in date.

About thirteen "stairway" tombs and thirty-seven mastabas were
examined. The precise number cannot be given, for when the walls of
the mastaba are entirely denuded, and only the well is left, one
cannot be sure that the grave was ever of the mastaba form. Of smaller
graves which yielded any evidence, there were about fifty-three; but
many more, which, from their position, orientation, and size, could be
assigned to the early period, were quite empty, or contained only a
few potsherds.

5. The most important mastaba was that of Ka-mena (PL. XXIII). It is
one of a group which we found under the great mound of drifted sand on
the north side of the wall. PL. VII gives two views of this group of
tombs during the process of excavation. The low walls are denuded near
the end of the sand-slope to a single brick's height; in the centre
they are a metre high, and they sink again towards the end under the
great wall. They are built with recessed panels, and were originally
plastered and painted white. Round the whole tomb runs a boundary
wall. The two small closed chambers at the end of the last passage
(corresponding to those which, in the tomb of Nefer-shem-em, contained
his two statues) were empty, but a few fragments