goddess Bau; son of the goddess Gatumdug; endowed with sovereignty and the sceptre of supremacy by the god Gal-alim; proclaimed afar among living creatures by the god Dunsaga; whose government is placed upon a solid foundation by the god Ningiszida his god."

The inscription then relates the construction of a temple by Gudea, and the solemnities and purifications that took place at the time of its dedication. No mourning was allowed during this period.

"No grave was dug in the burying-ground of the city; no corpse was interred (?). The kalu did not perform his funeral music or utter his lamentations; the wailing-woman did not allow her lamentation to be heard."

Gudea describes the materials he had brought from various countries for his building operations:

"The god Ningirsu opened to him the roads from the sea of Elam to the lower sea. In the mountains of Amanus, the mountain of cedars, he had cedar-trees of great height cut down. These cedars he employed to make great gates; he enriched them with shining ornaments, and placed them in the temple of Eninnu. Others he used as beams in the sanctuary of Emahkia.

"From the mountains of Phoenicia he brought stones and had them carved into blocks; he made of them the holy of holies of the temple of Eninnu. From Tidanum in the mountains of Phoenicia he brought shirgal habbia stones; he had them carved into the form of urpadda, and arranged them for the purpose of receiving the bars of the gates. In the country of Kagal-adda, in the mountains of Kimash, he had copper extracted. From the country of

Meroe he brought trees.

"By his arms he conquered the city of Anshan, in the land of Elam; its spoils he dedicated to the god Nin-girsu in the temple of Eninnu.

"From the mountains of the land of Magan he had hard stone brought, and had it carved into a statue of himself. 'O, my king, whose temple I have built, may life be my reward!' such was the

name that he gave to this statue, and in the temple of Eninnu he placed it."

This long inscription ends with a curse upon those who shall injure the statue or remove it from its place in the temple; and this malediction is in the style of those which the Assyrian and late Babylonian kings invoked on all who should disturb their records.

On another statue Gudea speaks of a New Year's festival which he celebrated in honour of the principal goddess:

"To Ningirsu, the powerful warrior of Ellilla, [this is dedicated] by Gudea, priestly governor of Lagash, who has constructed the temple of Eninnu, consecrated to Ningirsu.

"For Ningirsu, his lord, he has built the temple of Ekhud, the tower in stages, from the summit of which Ningirsu grants him a happy lot.

"Besides the offerings which Gudea made of his free will to Ningirsu and to the goddess Bau, daughter of Anna, his beloved consort, he has made others to his god Ningiszida.

"Gudea, priestly governor of Lagash, declared peace from Girsu to Uru-azagga.

"That year he had a block of rare stone brought from the country of Magan; he had it carved into a statue of himself.

"On the day of the beginning of the year, the day of the festival of Bau, on which offerings were made; one calf, one fat sheep, three lambs, six full grown sheep, two rams, seven pat of dates, 7 sab of cream, seven palm buds.

"Such were the offerings made to the goddess Bau in the ancient temple on that day..

CHAPTER VI.

THE TELL EL-AMARNA TABLETS.

THE most remarkable archæological discovery of the last few years has, without doubt, been that of the collection of letters, written in the cuneiform character and in the Babylonian language on clay tablets, which lay buried beneath the ground in the neighbourhood of the modern village of Tell el-Amarna, on the Nile. It is said that a country woman lighted upon these treasures by chance; but they quickly found their way into the hands of European collectors. Dr. Budge obtained eighty of the finest and best preserved of the tablets for the British Museum; the Royal Museum at Berlin acquired a share of the spoil; and the Egyptian Museum, which has recently been removed from Boulak to Gizeh, received a smaller number. A few also were purchased by private collectors: for instance, those of M. Bouriant, and one which M. Maspero has presented to the Louvre.

The site of Tell el-Amarna, the modern Arab village situated, nearly 190 miles to the south of Cairo, in a sandy plain between the mountain chain, which here recedes in the form of a bay, and the eastern bank of the Nile, has long been known to Egyptologists for its

ancient remains, and especially for the tombs hewn in the sides of the neighbouring hills. About fifteen centuries before Christ, as far as the date can be ascertained, there stood on this spot a city which for the time being held the rank of the capital of Egypt and of her dependent States. Amen-hetep, or, in the Greek form, Amenophis IV., the ninth king of the eighteenth dynasty, who was then reigning, had departed from the traditions of his forefathers, and had adopted a new religion of foreign origin, which enjoined the worship of Aten, or the Sun's Disk, and rejected that of Amen, the great god of Egypt, whose name accordingly the monarch erased from the walls of the temples. Amenophis IV. went so far as to change his own name to Chu-en-Aten, or the "Splendour of the Sun's Disk." He abandoned the great city of Thebes, which the kings of his dynasty had done so much to enlarge and beautify, and he founded, on the site of the modern Tell elAmarna, a new capital, which he called by his own new designation, Chu-en-Aten. But after his death, this town, which usurped for so brief a reign the place of Thebes, was soon abandoned in its turn, and in consequence of this sudden desertion it has left much clearer traces behind than greater cities which have fallen slowly into decay, or been razed to the ground by victorious besiegers. Memphis Memphis has disappeared; but the streets and buildings of Chuen-Aten can still in part be traced. The following description of the remains is given by Prisse d'Avennes :