68 
the reason that he was succeeded by his sister Nitocris. The 
short reign of Ocaras (a single year) might be explained by 
supposing that he was drowned in the Red Sea; but as there 
is nothing in the sacred narrative which obliges us to admit 
that the king perished in this manner, we may adopt the 
account of Herodotus, that he was murdered by his subjects. 
We may imagine that some of his nobles remained with 
Pharaoh on the shore; and that when they saw the sea re- 
turn and swallow up all that had gone in after the Israelites, 
they murdered the king, whose obstinacy had brought such 
calamities on his people, and then placed his sister Nitocris 
on the throne. As Nitocris was the daughter of Apappus, 
there is nothing to prevent us from supposing that the queen, 
now ninety years old, was the princess who had saved the 
infant Moses. Weary of her life, she lived only to avenge 
her brother. For this purpose, says Herodotus, she con- 
structed a large subterranean chamber, to which, when it 
was finished, she invited the principal agents in her brother’s 
death ; and there, by the waters of the Nile admitted through 
a secret canal, they were drowned in the midst of the ban- 
quet. The queen then threw herself into a room filled with 
ashes, where she perished. 
Mr. Petrie, by permission of Colonel Colby, read the first 
part of a paper “On the Antiquities of Tara Hill,” being 
a portion of the memoir written to illustrate the Ordnance 
Map of Meath, now on the eve of publication. 
The author first gives a detail of the mode of investiga- 
tion adopted. An accurate survey and ground plan of the 
locality was first procured. Translations were then made by 
Mr. O'Donovan of such ancient Irish MSS. as could be 
found relating to the subject of inquiry; the different copies, 
where such existed, having been carefully compared so as to 
obtain the greatest possible accuracy in the text. Those of 
chief value, two poems and a prose tract, are compositions 
ee 
