of fragments of carved alabaster which we discovered at the mounds of a small ancient town that we now visited. These consisted of pieces of alabaster cups and vases, and we picked up a number of beautiful little stems like miniature columns two and three inches long, the exact use of which we could not determine. We also found some ancient alabaster draughtmen, which we could identify by those we afterwards saw in the museum at Boulak on the draught-boards. There were also some carved blocks of limestone that seemed to have formed part of a temple. A little beyond these remains is the extensive modern Moslem cemetery of Zowych el Miuteen-where a funeral was going on at the time of our visit-which covers a very large area of ground. It is quite in the desert; and behind rise some cliffs, in which are rockcut tombs, with the ruin-covered promontory of Kom Ahmar, or the "Red Mound," projecting into the Nile. Lepsius visited these tombs, and says of them :—

"So little has been said by others, besides, on most of the monuments of Central Egypt, that almost everything we found here was

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new to me. I therefore was not a little astonished when we discovered at Zowyeh el Miuteen a series of nineteen rock-tombs, all of them bearing inscriptions which informed us who were their inhabitants, and belonging to the old time of the sixth dynasty, therefore extending almost to the period of the great Pyramids. Five of them contain more than once the shield of Makrobioten Apappus Pepi, who is said to have lived to the age of 106 years, and to have reigned 100 years; and in another Cheops is mentioned. Apart from these, there is also a single grave from the period of Rameses.”

It was hard work scrambling up to these rarely visited tombs, and I was obliged to content myself with two or three. The inscriptions were being wantonly defaced by the native quarrymen, who were blasting out one of the tombs when we were there, and who, when they are not engaged in wholesale destruction, seem to amuse themselves by picking out the coloured representations with their chisels, so that in one tomb which was probably highly ornamented when Lepsius saw it, nothing now remains. One of the best

representations which we have of an ancient Egyptian ship in full sail is yet visible in one of these chambers; but if the work of demolition continues, it will not long survive the others. The tombs I visited were about twenty feet by fifteen, and six feet high, the roofs covered with hieroglyphics; and I think it probable that there are many still undiscovered which may contain untouched sarcophagi. The neighbourhood was evidently used in old days as an extensive burying-ground; for we saw plenty of mummy-cloth lying about, and perhaps the tradition has clung to it ever since, which may account for the large Copt and Moslem cemeteries in the immediate vicinity the latter is a veritable city of the dead. Three times a-year the Moslems come over and spend a week making ceremonious lamentations over the tombs of their ancestors. The mounds of Kom Ahmar must be familiar to the Nile tourist, as they form a striking feature in the scenery, with their crumbling red-brick walls crowning the promontory to a height of at least fifty feet above the level of the river; they are also abundantly strewn with fragments of objects of alabaster, and it

is highly probable that these remains mark the site of the ancient city of Alabastron. Among other curiosities, I picked up here a deformed image in copper, which represented the god Bes-a sort of ancient Egyptian "Worth" who presided over the toilet of the ladies.

Our dinner was prepared at the family mansion of our host, in which he had been born, which was situated in the village of Nezlet es Sowyeh, the houses of which clustered round it like a brood of chickens under the wings of a hen. It contrasted most favourably with Egyptian villages generally, in the cleanliness of the streets and the neatness of the houses; and the mosque and school, which he had built, proved that even here wealth was felt to entail its responsibilities, and that our entertainer had been mindful of the moral and intellectual condition of his dependants. His wealth, which was very considerable, consisted largely in landed property, -his estates on the banks of the Nile, comprising some 4000 acres. The crop which he found the most profitable was sugar-cane; and his principal overseer hinted, with some

triumph, that he was more successful in its cultivation than the Daira Sanieh. Our dinner was served à la Turca, upon a round table, with flat loaves of bread for plates, and fingers for knives and forks; but notwithstanding this primitive method of grappling with it, to which we had by this time become accustomed, the repast was abundant, and excellently cooked. Altogether we saw enough of life in an Egyptian country-house to convince us that it could be made pleasant enough, provided one did not require any other society but that of one's own wife or wives. As a rule, those who can afford it have several town and country houses, with a wife in each, thus securing to themselves a harmonious establishment at each place. Persons who are unable to afford this luxury find it better to confine themselves to one wife, especially if she is still young, as domestic comfort is hopeless with two or more young wives in the same harem. We were furnished by our host with an introduction to one of his relatives, at El Kurm-a village about twelve miles higher up the river-which we reached in the afternoon of the following day, and were most cor