riangle).

Stairway 12 had been robbed, though the sandstone door had not been
moved. The body had been laid in a wooden box (80 cm. long), which
nearly filled the chamber. The wood had disappeared, but the thin
layers of paint still kept their place. The body lay on the left side,
contracted, the head to the north. A small diorite bowl stood near the
head of the coffin, and a common alabaster vase in the earth above it.
Round the bones of the arm were carnelian beads of short barrel shape.

No. 226 was exceptional in the position of the entrance to the tomb
chamber. On descending the stairway, one found oneself at the base of
a large well, in the east side of which, and not visible from the
stairway, stood the great door. In the filling was found a good flint
knife, of the usual early type, with small handle, but much inferior
to the finer Neolithic work.

The contents of this series of tombs have been given thus in detail,
in order to show that the same grouping of objects occurs over and
over again, and that they can therefore be with confidence attributed
to the original burials, though if only a single tomb had been
examined there would be no proof of the contemporaneousness of any
object in it. It will be observed that the contents of the stairway
tombs are very closely similar to those of the mastabas with square
wells, but that objects characteristic of Neolithic tombs--green
paint, double vases, marbles, etc.--are rather more numerous in the
stairway tombs. This makes it seem likely that the stairway tombs here
at El Kab are earlier in date than the mastabas with square wells.

12. Next we may describe the small graves, generally about 3-4 feet
deep, in which there is no chamber for burial, but the body is laid in
the shaft or open grave. These were found chiefly inside the fort of
El Kab, though a few were outside the walls. Some were distinctly of
Neolithic type, but of that later variety in which the fine black and
red pottery is not found. Of the earlier type, only one small group of
twenty graves was discovered; these were well outside the town, on the
west side of the railway, and so thoroughly cleared out that only half
a dozen chips of pottery remained to show their real nature. But of
the later kind many examples were found, and still more numerous were
the empty graves which, by their size and position, seemed to belong
to the same class.

This type is characterised by the contracted position of