Manchester Memoirs, Vol. liii. (1909), No. t). 



the wooden pegs or dowels with which the planks were 

 joined. Acacia is a harder wood than sycamore, hence 

 its use for this purpose. 



The Manchester Museum also contains a number of 

 boxes found at Kahun, a Xllth Dynasty town. These I 

 was also able to examine, and here again the dowels are 

 of Acacia wood. A full description of these boxes is given 

 in the " Kahun, Gurob and Hawara" report (Petrie 1). They 

 have flat lids of strips of wood passing lengthways, "secured 

 by two ledges across the inside. One ledge has pegs 

 along its outer side which fit into holes in the box, thus 

 the lid cannot be raised at one end. The other end of the 

 lid has a knob on it, which could be tied down to another 

 knob on the end of the box when it required fastening." 



¥ 



Fig. I. — Box No. 259, side showing the holes into which the pegs of 

 the lid fitted. In this case there were two pegs on the ledge of the lid, 

 about 6 cms. apart. 



When the holes AA wore down to slots, the pegs were shifted on the 

 ledge to fit into fresh holes BB, and so on. The shaded portion represents 

 the slots caused by the enlargement of the holes, the black portion the holes 

 the sides of which are not yet worn down. 



Internal measurement of side i8'i cm. Fig. reduced \. 



These pegs and knobs are made of the hard Acacia 

 wood, so that they may better withstand the wear they 

 would get, while the boxes in two cases are of cedar wood, 

 and in a third of sycamore, technically a " hard wood " 



