ceiling between each connecting beam, which runs from column to column, is vaulted. The columns in the southern tombs have lotus capitals, and are exceedingly graceful.

The Tomb of Ameni belongs to the northern group of tombs; he is not the head of the family which was buried at Beni Hasân, as has been sometimes asserted, for he had no children. (Recueil de Travaux, I., p. 175.) AmeniAmenemḥāt lived during the reign of Usertsen I., the second king of the XIIth dynasty; he was one of the feudal lords of Egypt, and chief of the nome of Meḥ or Antinoë, and chief president of the prophets. When quite a young man he was sent in the place of his father, who was too old for such work, to Ethiopia at the head of an army; he settled the frontiers of the country there, and came back to the king laden with spoil and tribute. In many other expeditions he was also perfectly successful. In the inscription on the tomb he says, “I have done all that I have said. I am a gracious and a compassionate man, and a ruler who loves his town. I have passed the course of years as the ruler of Meḥ, and all the labours of the palace have been carried out by my hands. I have given to the overseers of the temples of the gods of Meḥ 3,000 bulls with their cows, and I was in favour in the palace on account of it, for I carried all the products of the milk-bearing cows to the palace, and no contributions to the king's storehouses have been more than mine. I have never made a child grieve, I have never robbed the widow, I have never repulsed the labourer, I have never shut up a herdsman, I have never impressed, for forced labour, the labourers of a man who only employed five men; there was never a person miserable in my time, no one went hungry during my rule, for if there were years of scarcity I ploughed up all the arable land in the nome of Meḥ, up to its very frontiers on the north and south. By this means I made its people live and procured for them

provisions, so that there was not a hungry person among them. I gave to the widow the same amount as I gave to the married woman, and I made no distinction between the great and the little in all that I gave. And, behold, when the inundation was great, and the owners of the land became rich thereby, I laid no additional tax upon the fields." The pictures on the walls represent scenes on the farm, the battle-field, the hunting ground and the river; the various domestic pursuits of women are portrayed with wonderful skill. Ameni-Amenemḥāt,

,

was the son of the lady Ḥennu; the name of his father is not given.

The Tomb of Chnemu-Hetep also belongs to the northern group of tombs. Chnemu-hetep

was one of the feudal lords of Egypt, a “royal relative,” and the commandant of the land on the east side of the nome of Meḥ as far as the Arabian mountains; he lived during

the reign of (அப்ப்ப)

A

"Nubkau-Rā, son of the sun, Amenemḥāt," the third king of the XIIth dynasty. Of the history of this Egyptian gentleman the following facts are known. During one of the expeditions which Amenemḥāt I. made through Egypt, he raised to the rank of a feudal lord and "governor of the hilly land on the east of the nome of Meḥ," or Antinoë, the maternal grandfather of Chnemu-Hetep. In the reign of Usertsen I., the son of Amenemhat I., the title of nobility conferred upon this man in the preceding reign was confirmed, and a large tract of land, lying between the Nile and the Libyan mountains, was added to his estates; higher titles were also bestowed upon him in addition to those which he already possessed. The lands on the east side of the river, together with all his titles, passed into the hands of his eldest son Necht. Necht had a sister called Beqt, who likewise had a right to inherit all titles and property. She married a man called Neḥerȧ,

the son of Sebek-anch, and bore to him an only son called Chnemuhetep; it was for him that this tomb was built. After a time, for some reason not stated, the inheritance of MenātChufu,* which had been held by his uncle Necht, became vacant, and Åmenemḥāt II. handed it over to the young man Chnemu-hetep, together with all the titles and honours which his grandfather had enjoyed by the command of Amenemḥāt I. and Usertsen I. Chnemu-hetep married a lady called Chati, by whom he had seven children; one of whom, by the favour of Amenemḥāt II., became the ruler of Menat-Chufu. It has been said that Chnemu-ḥetep's grandfather was the Ameni-Amenemḥāt whose tomb lies close by; it is, however, distinctly said in the inscription on Chnemuhetep's tomb that he was called Sebek-anch. This tomb is famous for a remarkable scene painted on the north wall, which represents the arrival in Egypt of a family of thirtyseven persons belonging to the Āāmu, a Semitic race, who appear to have come thither to settle. The first person in the scene is the Egyptian "royal scribe, Nefer-hetep," who holds in his hands a piece of writing which states that in the sixth year of Usertsen II. thirty-seven people of the Aāmu brought to Chnemu-hetep, the son of a feudal lord,

paint for the eyes called ሰ ቦ

mest'emet.

Behind the scribe stands an Egyptian superintendent, and behind him the Aamu chief Abesha, "the prince of the foreign country," together with his fellow-countrymen and women, who have come with him; in addition to the eye-paint, they bring a goat as a present for Chnemu-hetep. The men of the Āāmu wear beards, and carry bows and arrows; both men and women are dressed in garments of many colours. The home of the Aāmu lay to the east of Palestine. In this picture some have seen a representation of the arrival

of Jacob's sons in Egypt to buy corn; there is no evidence for the support of this theory. That the Āāmu were shepherds or Hyksos is another theory that has been put forth. The paintings in Chnemu-hetep's tomb are if anything more beautiful than those in that of Åmeni, and they represent with wonderful fidelity the spearing of fish, the netting of birds, the hunting of wild animals, etc., etc.

In the other tombs are most interesting scenes connected with the daily occupations and amusements of the ancient Egyptians. It is much to be wished that copies of all these could be taken, for year by year they are slowly but surely disappearing.

Rôḍa, 182 miles from Cairo, and the seat of a large sugar manufactory, lies on the west bank of the river, just opposite Shêkh 'Abâdeh, or Antinoë, a town built by Hadrian, and named by him after Antinous,* who was drowned here in the Nile. To the south of Antinoë lies the convent of Abu Honnês (Father John), and in the districts in the immediate neighbourhood are the remains of several Coptic buildings which date back to the fifth century of our era. A little to the south-west of Rôḍa, lying inland, are the remains of the city of Hermopolis Magna, called in Egyptian

or

Chemennu, in Coptic Shmûn, welorn, and in Arabic Eshmûnên; the tradition which attributes the building of this city to Eshmûn, son of Misr, is worthless. The Greeks called it Hermopolis, because the Egyptians there worshipped Thoth, the scribe of the gods, who was named by the Greeks Hermes. A little distance from the town is the spot where large numbers of the ibis, a bird sacred to Thoth, were buried.

* A Bathynian youth, a favourite of the Emperor Hadrian.

MELAWÎ.

Melâwî, 188 miles from Cairo, is situated on the west bank of the river.

HAGGI KANDIL.

Haggi Kandil, 195 miles from Cairo, lies on the east bank of the river, about five miles from the ruins of the city built by Chut-en-aten, , or Amenophis IV., the

famous "heretic" king of the XVIIIth dynasty, whose Nefer-cheperu-Rā uā-en-Rā.

prenomen was

O

Amenophis IV. was the son of Amenophis III., by a Mesopotamian princess called Thi, who came from the land of Mitanni. When the young prince Amenophis IV. grew up, it was found that he had conceived a rooted dislike to the worship of Åmen-Ra, the king of the gods and great lord of Thebes, and that he preferred the worship of the disk of the sun to that of Åmen-Rā; as a sign of his opinions he called himself "beloved of the sun's disk," instead of the usual and time-honoured "beloved of Amen." The native Egyptian priesthood disliked the foreign queen, and the sight of her son with his protruding chin, thick lips, and other characteristic features of the negro race, found no favour in their sight; that such a man should openly despise the worship of Amen-Ra was a thing intolerable to the priesthood, and angry words and acts were, on their part, the result. In answer to their objections the king ordered the name of Åmen-Rā to be chiselled out of all the monuments, even from his father's names. Rebellion then broke out, and Chut-en-åten thought it best to leave Thebes, and to found a new city for himself at a place between Memphis and Thebes, now called Tell el-Amarna. The famous architect Bek, whose father, Men, served under Amenophis III., designed the temple buildings, and in a very short time a splendid town with beautiful granite sculptures sprang out of the desert.